:fJAL  v^'- :^  ' 


1^01585 


LIFE  AND  SERVICE  SERIES 


STUDIES   IN  THE  PARABLES  OF  JESUS 
HALFORD  E.  LUCCOCK 

HEART  MESSAGES  FROM  THE  PSALMS 
RALPH  WELLES  KEELER 

ELEMENTS  OF  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 
WILLIAM  S.  MITCHELL 

AMOS,    PROPHET    OF    A    NEW    ORDER 
LINDSAY  B.  LONGACRE 


LIFE  AND  SERVICE   SERIES 

Edited  by  HENRY  H.  MEYER 

Amos^  Prophet  of  a 
New  Order 


LINDSAY  B.  LONGACRE 

Professor  of  Old  Testament  Literature  and  Religion 
in  the  Iliff  School  of  Theology 


THE  METHODIST  BOOK  CONCERN 
NEW  YORK  CINCINNATI 


Copyright,  1921,  by 
LINDSAY  B.  LONGACRE 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

Life  and  Service  Series 7 

To  Those  Who  Use  These  Lessons 9 

Bibliography 10 

I.  The  Place  of  Prophets  in  Human  Life.  ..11 

11.  The  Times  and  the  Man 18^ 

HI.   The  God  of  Nations  and  of  Men 25^ 

IV.   The  Chosen  People 32'" 

V.   The  Deceitfulness  of  Riches 39  *^ 

VI.   The  Prophet  and  the  Business  Man 46 

VII.   True  Worship 53 

VIII.  Are  National  Disasters  Divine  Punish- 
ments?   60 

IX.  Prophetic  Visions 68 

X.   The  Judgment — ^According  to  Amos 7o 

XL  The  Blessed  Future 84 

XII.  Prophets  and  the  Church 91 

XIII.  Notes  that  Interpret  Amos 99^ 


LIFE  AND  SERVICE  SERIES 

A  NUMBER  of  causes  h^ve  combined  to  create  a  need 
for  special  elective  courses  for  adults.  Perhaps  chief 
among  these  causes  is  the  rapid  increase  in  the  adult  mem- 
bership of  our  Sunday  schools  during  the  past  fifteen  years. 
The  organized  class  movement  has  been  influential  in  bring- 
ing into  the  Sunday  school  many  thousands  of  men  and 
women,  so  that  now  it  is  not  uncommon  to  find  schools  in 
which  the  adults  represent  decidedly  more  than  one  half 
the  total  attendance. 

With  increase  of  numbers  has  come  a  desire  for  variety 
in  the  courses  of  study  offered.  With  one  or  two  small 
classes,  meeting  usually  as  part  of  an  assembly  including 
the  entire  membership  of  the  school,  there  was  little  de- 
mand for  any  other  than  the  Uniform  Lesson.  As  the 
adult  classes  increased  in  number  and  size  the  conviction 
grew  that  different  types  of  classes  required  different  kinds 
of  study  courses. 

The  sentiment  in  behalf  of  a  variety  of  study  courses  has 
been  strengthened  by  the  growing  recognition  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  grading.  This  principle  has  won  almost  universal 
recognition  as  applied  to  the  elementary  and  secondary 
groups  in  the  church  school.  But  why  should  grading 
cease  automatically  with  the  close  of  adolescence  ?  Are  we 
to  believe  that  adult  life  is  lived  upon  a  dead  level  ?  We  all 
know  that  this  is  not  true,  and,  accordingly,  the  general 
acceptance  of  graded  courses  for  the  children's  and  young 
people's  departments  has  tended  to  strengthen  the  convic- 
tion that  something  akin  to  graded  courses  should  be  pro- 
vided for  adult  classes. 

Again,  there  has  been  a  growing  recognition  of  the  im- 
portance of  the  elective  principle.  Why  may  not  adult 
men  and  women,  who  may  be  presumed  to  know  something 
about  what  they  need  as  well  as  what  they  want,_  be  per- 
mitted to  choose  their  study  courses  instead  of  having  only 
one  course  urged  upon  all  who  look  to  the  Church  School  to 

7 


8  LIFE  AND  SEEYICE  SEEIES 

meet,  in  part  at  least,  their  needs  for  the  discussion  and 
study  of  the  problems  of  religion  and  for  the^  stimulation 
and  development  of  their  religious  lives?  It  is  clear  that 
the  desire  of  thoughtful  men  and  women  to  choose  what 
they  shall  study  is  steadily  growing. 

The  Life  and  Service  Series,  in  common  with  a  number 
of  other  series  of  studies,  is  offered  in  response  to  the  need 
for  special  elective  study  courses.  It  includes  a  number  of 
textbooks,  each  consisting  of  thirteen  lessons,  that  is,  studies 
for  a  period  of  three  months  for  groups  meeting  once  each 
week.  Both  in  subject-matter  and  in  form  of  treatment  of 
the  respective  subjects  these  courses,  it  is  believed,  will  be 
found  to  offer  a  desirable  and  pleasing  variety. 

Some  of  them  will  be  found  especially  adapted  to  the 
needs  of  voluntary  study  groups  in  colleges  and  prepara- 
tory schools,  and  others  for  high-school  credit  in  Sunday 
and  in  week-day  religious  instruction. 

In  Amos,  Prophet  of  a  New  Order,  the  author  has  pro- 
vided a  strong,  vital  study  in  popular  form  of  the  personal- 
ity and  message  of  tlie  prophet  Amos.  In  st}'le  the  book 
will  be  found  to  be  as  vigorous  and  interest-compelling  as 
it  is  morally  significant  and  vital  in  content.  It  should 
prove  a  most  valuable  study  for  a  large  number  of  adult 
classes.  The  Editors. 


TO   THOSE  WHO   USE  THESE  LESSONS 

The  study  of  the  little  tract  commonly  known  as  the 
book  of  Amos  is  of  value  chiefly  as  it  leads  to  some  ac- 
quaintance with  the  prophet  himself,  in  order  that  through 
him  one  may  get  a  glimpse  of  the  way  God  speaks  to  men. 
Accepting  the  fact  that  God  spoke  through  Amos,  we  are 
concerned  with  the  subjects  on  which  he  spoke  and  with 
the  questions  (1)  How  far  do  the  same  or  similar  sub- 
jects concern  us  to-day?  and  (2)  How  far  do  his  words 
apply  to  present-day  conditions? 

In  pursuance  of  this  purpose  the  little  book  of  Amos  has 
not  been  followed  mechanically  from  the  first  verse  to 
the  last,  but  the  various  sayings  that  deal  with  the  same 
subject  are  brought  together  in  the  successive  lessons. 
This  permits  a  more  orderly  treatment  of  the  teachings  of 
tliis  great  prophet — a  prophet  much  greater  than  the 
small  size  of  his  book  would  lead  one  to  expect. 

The  first  step  in  the  study  of  the  lessons  is  to  read  from 
the  Bible  the  words  of  Amos  himself.  Only  after  the  text 
has  been  read  with  care  can  this  book  be  used  with  profit. 

Lindsay  B.  Longacee. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  following  books  are  both  useful  and  interesting.  The 
first  two  are  small  commentaries.  The  others  are  more  gen- 
eral and  more  practical  in  their  treatment.  A  teacher  should 
have  at  hand  at  least  the  volume  of  "The  Cambridge  Bible." 

"The  Cambridge  Bible":      Joel  and  Amos. 

"The  New  Century  Bible":     The  Minor  Prophets,  Volume  I. 

"The  Expositor's  Bible":  Booh  of  the  Twelve  Prophets, 
Volume  I. 

"Messages  of  the  Bible":     The  Earlier  Prophets. 

The  Message  of  the  Earlier  Prophets  to  Israel,  Brooke. 

The  Prophets  of  Israel,  Cornill. 

History  of  the  People  of  Israel,  Cornill. 

The  Syrian  Christ,  Rihbany. 


CHAPTEE  I 
THE  PLACE  OF  PKOPHETS  IN  HUMAN  LIFE 

"What  went  ye  out  to  see?  a  prophet?"  Thus  Jesus 
challenged  the  bystanders  regarding  John  the  Baptist. 

Long  before  the  days  of  Jesus  and  of  John,  another 
prophet  had  appeared  whose  message  was  as  unexpected 
and  as  vigorous  as  that  of  the  Baptist,  and  whose  appear- 
ance was  almost,  if  not  quite,  as  uncouth. 

The  men  of  culture  and  fashion,  of  wealth  and  power, 
who  lived  in  that  prophet's  days  have  perished  unhonored 
and  unsung,  while  this  stem,  uncompromising  preacher  of 
a  new  righteousness  still  shines  as  a  light  in  the  world. 
We  know  this  forerunner  of  Jesus  and  of  John  by  the 
name  of  Amos.    Let  us  go  out  to  see  him  ! 

There  will  be  nothing  about  his  appearance  particularly 
attractive.  When  he  visits  Bethel,  where  the  king  lives, 
his  dress,  manner,  and  speech  will  show  him  to  be  from 
the  country.  If  he  is  to  make  himself  heard,  he  must  have 
something  to  say,  and  he  must  say  it  with  power.  But 
when  his  eye  catches  yours,  you  have  no  doubt  about  his 
ability  or  his  courage.  Here  is  one  (you  feel)  in  whom 
the  word  of  God  is  "like  a  hammer  that  shatters  the  rock.'' 

What  was  such  a  man  doing  there? — this  "prophet," 
as  he  is  called.    What  is  a  prophet,  and  what  does  he  do  ? 

Volumes  have  been  written  on  this  subject,  and  any 
good  Bible  dictionary  has  articles  on  "Prophet"  and  on 
"Prophecy"  which  are  well  worth  consulting.  A  plausible 
statement  to  start  with,  however,  would  be  as  follows: 
When  a  man  of  unusual  devotion  to  God  and  his  fellow 
men,  with  special  understanding  of  God's  will  and  man's 
duty,  is  so  stirred  in  his  soul  that  he  cannot  keep  still  about 
it  but  must  proclaim  the  truth  that  is  in  him,  exhorting 
the  people  to  see  it  his  way  and  to  do  ,as  he  says ;  and  when 
subsequent  history  shows  this  man  to  have  been  right, 

11 


12        AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDER 

(whether  his  own  people  believed  him  or  not,  that  man  is 
called  a  prophet. 

The  important  points  in  this  statement  are  (1)  the 
prophet's  own  conviction  that  he  has  a  true  vision  of  the 
will  of  God;  (2)  his  concern  for  his  own  people;  and  (3) 
the  truth  of  his  message  recognized  in  after  times.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  the  prophets  do  not  usually  live  long  enough 
to  verify  this  third  point;  and  as  the  majority  of  their 
own  people  usually  misunderstand  them  or  actually  oppose 
them,  the  prophet  must  get  what  satisfaction  he  can  from 
his  own  inner  consciousness  and  from  the  friendship  of 
the  few  who  sympathize  and  cooperate  with  him. 

They  Were  Real  People 

The  prophets  of  the  type  of  Amos  form  a  small  but 
glorious  company.  To  say  that  they  deserve  to  be  under- 
stood is  to  put  it  mildly.  No  richer  task  awaits  any  Bible 
student  than  a  prolonged  and  profound  fellowship  with 
any  one  of  them;  and  though  that  task  is  difficult,  even  a 
partial  success  is  worth  the  effort. 

It  is  not  easy  at  first  to  think  of  prophets  (especially  the 
Biblical  prophets)  as  real  men.  The  fact  that  they  are 
"in  the  Bible"  seems  to  remove  them  from  the  common  life. 
They  se^m  to  stand  apart  not  only  from  us  to-day  but  even 
from  the  men  of  their  own  time.  Yet  one  of  the  first  neces- 
sities is  to  recognize  them  as  truly  human,  cheered  by 
human  joys  and  saddened  by  human  sorrows.  Indeed, 
they  were  men  before  they  were  prophets;  and  they  must 
be  known  as  men,  so  far  as  that  is  possible,  before  their 
prophetic  work  and  character  can  be  appreciated. 

Little  as  we  know  about  Amos,  for  instance,  his  rural 
life  alone  throws  a  flood  of  light  on  the  naturalness  of  the 
way  he  looked  at  the  luxury  of  the  city.  For  him  "the 
simple  life''  was  the  normal  and  familiar  life ;  and  one  can 
read  between  the  lines  of  such  a  passage  as  Amos  6.  1-6 
the  outraged  feelings  of  a  man  to  whom  all  this  luxury 
was  useless  and  citified  as  well  as  heartless  and  wicked. 

Great  but  Lonesome 
The  fact  that  Amos  was  thus  natural  and  human  does 


PEOPHETS  AND  HUMAN  LIFE  13 

not  mean  that  he  was  any  less  religious  or  that  he  was  not 
in  every  respect  exactly  like  an  "ordinary  man."  All 
"great"  men  are  different  from  "ordinary"  men,  yet  are  not 
less  human  on  that  account.  Abraham  Lincoln  and  Henry 
Ward  Beecher  were  extraordinary  yet  quite  natural  and 
human.  Their  kinship  with  average  mortals  only  made 
their  true  greatness  the  more  noticeable. 

The  same  kind  of  thing  is  true  of  the  prophets,  Amos 
included.  In  their  particular  field  they  stood  far  above 
their  fellows;  in  matters  of  the  common  life  they  stood  at 
their  side.  "Stand  up,"  said  Peter  to  Cornelius,  "I  my- 
self also  am  a  man"  (Acts  10.  26) ;  and  it  was  the  same 
with  the  prophets. 

Great  as  these  men  were,  one  cannot  help  feeling  sorry 
for  them;  for  they  must  have  been  terribly  lonesome. 
There  were  but  few  of  them  all  told;  and  when  we  re- 
member that  these  few  were  distributed  over  a  thousand 
years,  it  is  quite  clear  that  they  could  not  hope  to  be  known 
and  heard  by  "a  jury  of  their  peers."  Of  course  they  must 
have  had  some  friends.  If  it  had  not  been  for  these,  the 
prophets'  words  would  not  have  been  heeded  and  pre- 
served. In  addition  to  the  books  of  the  prophets,  such  books 
as  Deuteronomy  and  Kings  show  that  the  great  mass  of 
the  people  paid  little,  if  any,  attention  to  the  great 
prophets.  The  only  reason  why  the  prophetic  warnings 
and  rebukes  were  repeated  over  and  over  again  to  the  same 
generation  and  by  successive  prophets  to  successive  genera- 
tions is  that  they  were  scorned  or  ignored  by  the  people 
to  whom  they  were  addressed  in  the  first  place. 

It  was  a  comparatively  small  group  that  gathered  about 
any  individual  prophet;  and  it  is  to  some  of  these  friendly 
listeners  that  we  are  probably  indebted  for  the  reports  of 
the  prophetic  words.  The  situation  was  entirely  similar  to 
that  of  Jesus  himself.  Even  he  gathered  only  a  small 
group  of  followers  in  his  own  day,  and  it  is  from  these 
that  there  have  come  down  to  us  the  words  of  the  Master, 
heard  and  treasured  by  the  friendly  few. 

One  more  point  regarding  the  prophets  is  of  great  im- 
portance. Indeed,  it  is  of  much  more  importance  to  us 
than  it  could  have  been  to  any  one  of  themselves.     It  is 


14   AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

this :  The  Bible  nowhere  indicates  that  the  line  of  prophets 
has  been  exhausted  or  completed. 

While  it  is  true  that  the  Bible  prophets  are  better  known 
than  any  others,  that  is  chiefly  because  the  Bible  itself  is 
so  familiar.  Such  passages  as  Num.  11.  29 ;  Joel  2.  28,  29 
(Acts  2.  17,  18);  Eph.  4.  11  plainly  indicate  that  the 
possession  of  the  prophetic  spirit  was  regarded  as  the  ideal 
for  all  men.  And  when  Paul  speaks  of  his  converts  as 
'^n^uilt  upon  the  foundation  of  the  apostles  and  prophets'^ 
(Eph.  2.  20)  he  is  referring  not  to  the  past  but  to  the 
present — to  the  apostles  and  prophets  of  his  own  day. 

This  fact  opens  up  a  wholly  new  view  of  prophets  and 
of  prophecy.  The  common  idea  that  true  prophets  are  to 
be  found  only  in  the  Bible  and  that  these  were  a  curious 
kind  of  folk,  unlike  any  others  then  or  since,  is  neither 
stated  nor  implied  anywhere  in  the  Bible.  Furthermore, 
the  church  has  never  taken  any  such  position;  it  has  ex- 
alted and  reverenced  the  prophets  of  the  Bible,  as  was 
right  and  proper  to  do,  but  the  church  has  never  said  that 
the  voice  of  prophecy  was  silenced  when  the  last  word  of 
the  Bible  had  been  written  down.  The  church  stands  to- 
day upon  a  foundation  of  apostles  and  prophets  which, 
reaching  far  back  into  the  past,  includes  men  and  women 
of  the  living  present. 

Spokesmen  for  God 

Consider  the  place  the  prophet  fills  in  the  life  of  the 
world.  He  is  a  man  who,  by  virtue  of  gifts  and  insight 
quite  out  of  the  ordinary,  has  beconie  the  very  voice  of  God 
to  his  generation.  Not,  indeed,  that  he  is  at  that  time 
recognized  as  such ;  but  later  generations  so  recognize  him. 
He  is  above  all  else  God's  spokesman.  Not  prediction  but 
>/  proclamation  is  his  main  work.  He  is  a  forthtelleT  rather 
than  a  /ore teller.  He  views  the  life  of  his  day  in  the  light 
of  his  vision  of  God.  He  turns  that  light  upon  men's 
morals  and  motives,  upon  the  way  they  think  and  act  to- 
ward each  other,  and  he  sees  in  these  relations  between 
man  and  man  the  special  field  in  which  man  works  out  his 
religion  and  the  place,  above  all  others,  where  God  is  really 
present. 


PEOPHETS  AND  HUMAN  LIFE  15 

He  is  not  so  much  concerned  with  individuals  as  with  the 
social  life  in  which  individuals  find  their  common  interests 
and  their  common  welfare.  He  thus  becomes,  above  all 
else,  a  critic  of  social  conditions.  This  is,  of  course,  not  the 
prophet's  only  interest,  but  it  is  his  chief  one  and  it  colors 
all  his  thought. 

They  Spoke  at  Their  Peril 

The  prophet,  then,  is  a  man  so  convinced  that  God  is  one 
who  desires  a  clean,  wholesome  social  order  here  on  earth 
that  he  stands  right  up  and  says  so.  He  always  sees  a 
higher  level  than  men  have  yet  attained.  He  sees  a  nobler 
ideal  than  they  have  yet  realized.  And  in  pointing  out 
the  path  leading  to  it  he  necessarily  points  out  where  men 
have  gotten  off  the  track.  He  must  show  the  error  and  the 
weakness  of  the  present  position  before  anyone  can  be 
brought  to  see  the  need  of  something  better. 

For  this  reason  he  is  unwelcome  to  most  of  his  fellow 
countrymen.  People  do  not  love  a  "knocker.''  Social 
changes  have  always  been  looked  upon  by  most  people  as 
unnecessary  if  not  downright  dangerous.  Institutions  and 
corporations,  built  up  on  the  supposition  that  conditions 
will  remain  unchanged,  are  always  up  in  arms  against  any 
proposed  readjustment  even  if  it  should  be  for  the  better. 
They  are  sure  it  would  not  be  better  for  them,  and  so  they 
are  against  it. 

.  This  means  that  a  prophet  is  a  kind  of  pioneer — a  path- 
finder through  a  dense  growth  of  selfish  interests  and  blind 
indifference.  If  he  undertakes  to  blaze  a  trail  through  this 
territory,  he  must  risk  all  the  dangers  of  such  a  task. 
Thorns  of  malice  will  scratch  him,  rocky  cliffs  of  ignorance 
will  block  his  path,  snakes  of  slander  will  bite  him,  the  wild 
beasts  of  pride  and  jealousy  will  attack  him.  He  takes  his 
life  in  his  hand.  But  he  has  heard  the  call  of  the  "trumpet 
that  shall  never  sound  retreat"  and  he,  with  God,  marches 
on. 

How  Are  Prophets  to  Be  Eecogn-ized? 

Suppose  such  a  man  were  among  us  to-day :  how  could 
he  be  recognized?    The  answer  is  easy  (and  true)  that  he 


16        AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDER 

may  be  recognized  now  in  the  same  way  that  Amos  was 
recognized  in  his  day.  This,  nnfortiinately,  does  not  carry 
us  very  far,  for  there  is  no  doubt  that  only  a  minority  of 
Amos'  contemporaries  regarded  him  as  a  true  prophet  of 
the  living  God.  Many  more  regarded  him  as  a  questionable 
and  dangerous  character,  and  some  never  knew  him  at  all. 
There  is  something  pathetic  in  the  thought  that  many  in 
Israel  lived  and  died  without  knowing  that  an  Amos  had 
been  among  them. 

The  few  who  realized  that  in  Amos  a  great  leader  had 
arisen  were  men  who,  on  their  own  account,  had  already 
become  aware  that  things  were  not  as  they  should  be ;  that 
business,  politics,  religion,  society  at  large,  all  came  far 
short  of  the  glory  of  God  and  the  welfare  of  men.  They 
realized  that  "new  occasions  teach  new  duties,"  and  that 
the  time  was  ripe  for  just  such  changes  as  Amos  demanded. 
In  this  spirit  they  were  ready  to  recognize  and  to  welcome 
one  who  stirred  their  souls  and  voiced  their  hopes. 

Prophets  have  never  been  recognized  by  curiosity  seek- 
ers but  only  by  those  prepared  to  cooperate  with  them. 
"Deep  calleth  unto  deep."  If  there  is  a  prophet  at  hand  to- 
day— and  there  is  no  reason  why  there  should  not  be — 
we  can  be  pretty  sure  that  he  will  show  the  marks  that 
prophets  have  shown  through  all  past  history:  (1)  He 
will  speak  with  unfaltering  conviction,  courage,  and  can- 
dor. (2)  He  will  show  utter  disregard  for  personal  advan- 
tage of  power,  publicity,  or  success.  (3)  He  will  definitely 
challenge  the  social  order.  (4)  Por  this  challenge  he  will 
be  denounced  and  opposed  by  representatives  of  com- 
mercial, political,  and  religious  institutions.  (5)  He  will 
leave  in  the  minds  of  some  the  seed  of  such  novel,  vital 
principles  that  these  will  take  root  and  grow,  and  after 
ages  will  point  back  to  him  as  a  great  pioneer  in  the  life 
of  the  spirit.  (6)  He  will  pay  the  price  of  spiritual  great- 
ness in  being  misunderstood,  opposed,  neglected,  and  ap- 
parently defeated. 

Only  a  man  of  supreme  courage  and  unfaltering  faith  is 
sufficient  for  these  things.  God's  word  is  a  fire  (Jer.  20.  9; 
23.  29)  and  it  will  be  uttered.  It  is  being  uttered  to-day, 
and  those  who  seek  it  find  it.    But  let  those  who  seek  it 


PEOPHETS  AND  HUMAN  LIFE  17 

remember  that  the  signs  by  which  God's  word  may  be 
known  must  be  learned  from  the  story  of  those  who  have 
dared  to  speak  it. 

The  question  for  us  is  not  so  much,  How  can  a  prophet 
be  recognized?  as  it  is.  Are  we  ready  to  follow  him  when 
he  appears?  That  readiness  is  the  secret  of  recognition. 
Happy  were  those  whom  Amos  could  call  his  friends;  and 
who  were  neither  afraid  nor  ashamed  to  be  known  as  such ! 

Questions  for  Discussion 

Do  we  need  prophets  to-day? 

If  there  were  prophets  to-day  what  would  they  talk 
about  ? 

Where  might  they  be  expected  to  appear? 

For  Further  Reading 

"Prophets"  as  described  in  some  Bible  dictionary  or 
encyclopedia. 

The  difficulty  of  recognizing  prophets,  even  in  Bible 
times:  Deut.  13.  1-5;  18.'  9-22;  Jer.  23.  9-40. 

^'The  Prophet  in  Early  Israel,"  in  the  volume  of  "The 
Expositor's  Bible"  recommended  in  the  Bibliography. 


! 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  TIMES  AND  THE  MAN 

The  keynote  of  national  feeling  in  the  time  of  Amos 
was  security.  It  was  a  time  of  social,  financial,  and  po- 
litical prosperity.  This  does  not  mean  that  everybody 
was  happy.  Our  own  country,  in  its  highest  tides  of  so- 
called  prosperity,  has  never  lacked  great  masses  of  people 
who  were  compelled  to  live  in  tragic  poverty,  submerged 
by  a  flood  of  social  injustice  above  which  they  were  utterly 
unable  to  rise.  Prosperity  meant,  then  as  now,  the  security 
and  success  of  those  who  held  political  power  or  financial 
advantage.  Amos  saw  this  aspect  of  life  so  clearly  and  de- 
nounced it  so  unsparingly  that  one  is  surprised  at  the 
completeness  of  the  picture  revealed  by  his  sharp  flashes  of 
prophetic  fire. 

He  saw  (1)  wealth  and  luxury  everywhere:  the  idle 
rich  (3.  12;  6.  1),  with  their  ivory  furniture  and  silk  up- 
holstery (3.  12;  6.  4),  their  town  and  country  houses 
(3.  15),  their  table  delicacies  (6.  4),  and  their  cosmetics 
(6.  6).  He  heard  the  music  that  unfailingly  accompanied 
private  feast  and  public  worship  (5.  23;  6.  5;  8.  3,  10). 
He  saw  the  degradation  of  the  liquor  traffic  (4.  1;  6.  6). 

He  saw  (2)  the  wretchedness  of  the  poor:  exploited  by 
^^gentlemen's  agreements"  (3.  10),  robbed  of  justice 
through  bribery  (5.  12),  cheated  with  light  weights  (8.  5), 
starved  with  adulterated  foods  (8.  6),  and  sacrificed  to 
"big  business''  (2.  6). 

He  saw  (3)  a  religion  ceremonially  elaborate  but  en- 
tirely lacking  in  ethical  content  (5.  21-24)  :  the  Sabbath 
irksome  when  it  interfered  with  business  (8.  5),  illegal 
gains  insidiously  used  for  religious  purposes  (2.  8),  the 
vanity  of  published  subscription  lists  (4.  5),  and  the  sub- 
serviency of  the  clergy  to  men  in  high  position  (7.  12,  13). 

It  is  easy  for  the  rich  and  happy  to  believe  that  they 
have  divine  approval.     What  better  assurance  could  they 

18 


THE  TIMES  AND  THE  MAN  19 

have  than  the  pleasure  and  power  in  which  they  stand? 
In  these  secure  ones  the  nation  felt  itself  not  only  pros- 
perous but  divinely  favored.  Since  they  are  conscious  of 
representing  the  country,  interference  with  them  and  their 
pursuits  would  be  interfering  with  the  country's  welfare. 
To  disturb  tJieir  order  is  to  disturb  the  social  order.  To 
criticize  their  religion  is  to  prove  oneself  a  heretic  and  a 
blasphemer.  God  is  on  the  side  of  those  in  power  (they 
think),  and  so  to  the  security  of  financial  and  political 
position  the  leading  people  of  Amos'  day  added  the  com- 
forting conviction  that  they  were  Jehovah's  chosen  people 
— chosen  to  be  thus  superior  and  secure. 

A  New  Thought  of  God 

Amos  thought  differently.  He  saw  the  prosperity,  but 
he  saw  more  than  that.  He  saw  Jehovah's  choice  at  work, 
but  it  was  not  a  choosing  that  approved  such  conditions. 
So  Amos  drew  his  own  picture  of  this  security,  denied  that 
Jehovah's  favor  was  a  blind  partisanship,  and  criticized 
king,  priest,  and  people  (that  is,  the  "representative"  peo- 
ple) on  moral  and  ethical  grounds — grounds  that  for 
Amos  were  religious.  We  can  appreciate  the  daring  of 
such  a  criticism  and  the  courage  of  such  a  critic,  but  we 
can  hardly  appreciate  the  ntvelty  of  either. 

It  is  not  without  a  certiiin  awe  that  one  finds  himself 
face  to  face,  for  the  first  time  in  history,  with  the  concep- 
tion that  God's  character  is  a  character  of  principle  rather 
than  of  partisanship ;  and  that  he  is  actuated  by  motives  of 
justice  rather  than  of  arbitrary  indulgence.  An  idea  that 
has  become  a  commonplace  of  religious  thought  must  have 
had  an  origin  somewhere ;  and  so  far  as  our  Scriptures  are 
concerned,  this  is  the  time  and  the  place  where  this  great 
principle  was  first  definitely  announced.  Elijah  had 
moved  in  this  direction  when  he  rebuked  the  social  injus- 
tice of  Ahab  (1  Kings  21),  but  Amos  was  the  first  to  set 
forth  ethical  righteousness  as  central  and  determinative 
in  the  divine  character. 

Eeligion  Eeflects  Social  Life 
It  may  at  first  seem  strange  that  such  a  vital  revelation 


20    AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDEE 

concerning  the  character  of  God  should  be  so  closely  re- 
lated to  the  kind  of  life  that  Amos  saw  about  him.  Yet  this 
connection  between  history  and  religion  may  be  illus- 
trated at  almost  any  stage  of  the  nation's  progress.  For 
instance,  when  the  Hebrews  entered  Canaan,  the  land  was 
not  only  populated  but  had  its  cultivated  fields,  its  vine- 
yards and  olive  trees,  its  villages  and  towns,  and  its  walled 
cities  and  great  buildings.  It  thus  formed  a  striking  con- 
trast to  the  wilderness  in  which  for  years  the  Hebrews  had 
been  living.  The  whole  scheme  of  life  was  more  elaborate 
and  called  into  play  a  variety  of  occupations  and  interests 
that  in  the  desert  would  be  quite  unknown. 

The  contrast  is  plainly  indicated  in  two  familiar  phrases 
descriptive  of  the  Promised  Land.  One  phrase  starts  from 
the  desert  life,  where  flocks  and  herds  supplied  the  chief 
subsistence,  and  where  honey  stored  in  the  rocks  by  wild 
bees  was  a  delicacy.  In  terms  of  this  desert  welfare  the 
Promised  Land  was  referred  to  as  "flowing  with  milk  and 
honey.''  The  other  phrase  starts  from  the  life  in  Canaan 
itself,  with  its  vineyards  and  harvests;  and  in  the  words 
"a  land  of  corn  and  wine"  one  sees  a  picture  of  the  land 
painted,  so  to  speak,  by  its  own  hand. 

The  new  life  exerted  a  deep  influence  upon  Hebrew 
thought.  The  simple  life  of  the  desert  had  been  asso- 
ciated with  a  simple  form  of  religion.  Jehovah  was  thought 
of  largely  as  the  Defender  of  tribal  interests,  as  Leader  in 
war,  as  Master  of  the  furious  desert  storms,  and  as  the 
God  of  the  glowing  stars.  In  Canaan  the  people  of  the 
land  felt  their  gods  to  be  active  in  still  wider  fields.  The 
populated  land  had  many  shrines  and  sacred  places  where 
the  gods  were  sought.  The  fields  needed  sunshine  and 
showers  (not  the  fierce  storms  of  the  desert  but  refresh- 
ing rains),  and  the  gods  of  Canaan  were  believed  to  send 
these.  Above  all,  the  wonderful  process  of  fertility  itself, 
in  which  the  seed  bears  "thirtyfold,  sixtyfold,  and  a  hun- 
dredfold," was  a  field  in  which  the  power  and  activity  of 
the  gods  were  especially  seen. 

When  one  considers  that  in  modern  times  all  these  fields 
and  forces  are  recognized  without  question  as  falling  within 
the  proper  scope  of  one  divine  Providence,  it  is  not  sur- 


THE  TIMES  AND  THE  MAN  21 

prising  that  the  Hebrews,  in  the  years  following  their 
entrance  into  Canaan,  felt  more  and  more  that  they  would 
have  to  pay  some  attention  to  the  religion  of  the  land  if 
they  themselves  were  to  live  there  with  any  security.  Out 
of  this  situation  sprang  some  of  the  most  difficult  re- 
ligious problems  with  which  Amos  had  to  deal.  Yet  it 
was  due  in  part  to  such  influences  as  these  that  the  He- 
brews began  to  move  out  toward  larger  conceptions  of  God 
than  either  the  desert  or  Canaan  could  satisfy  or  supply. 
It  was  not  a  rapid  progress.  They  traveled  by  devious 
ways  and  they  fell  into  many  errors;  but  from  time  to 
time  great  leaders  arose  who  were  able  "to  reprove,  rebuke, 
exhort,''  and  who  succeeded  in  turning  the  thoughts  of 
earnest  souls  toward  larger  and  truer  conceptions  of  God. 

The  Great  King  Jeroboam  II 
These  leaders  were  the  prophets,  among  whom  Amos 
stands  out  in  bold  outlines.  He  appeared  in  the  reign  of 
Jeroboam  II,  king  of  Israel.  The  brief  account  of  this 
long  reign  (2  Kings  14.  23-29)  includes  enough  to  show 
that  Jeroboam  must  have  been  a  great  king— a  fact  con- 
firmed by  the  picture  of  the  kingdom  given  in  the  book 
of  Amos.  This  is  indicated  by  such  statements  as  2  Kings 
14.  25 :  ''He  restored  the  coast  of  Israel  from  the  entering 
of  Hamath  unto  the  sea  of  the  plain  [literally,  Arabah]"; 
and  verse  28 :  "He  recovered  Damascus,  and  Hamath."  In 
looking  up  these  places  on  the  map  note  that  they  indicate 
the  widest  expansion  of  the  northern  kingdom,  comparable 
even  to  the  successes  of  David  himself.  Such  triumphs 
are  all  the  more  impressive  in  the  case  of  Jeroboam  be- 
cause they  are  reported  by  one  who  evidently  could  not 
regard  this  king  with  entire  approval  (verse  24). 

Toward  the  close  of  Jeroboam's  reign  a  serious  danger 
appeared  on  the  nation's  horizon  in  the  shape  of  the  great 
empire  of  Assyria.  If  this  great  nation  should  start  out 
on  a  campaign  of  conquest,  Israel  would  be  as  helpless 
before  her  as  Belgium  was  before  Germany  at  the  begmnmg 
of  the  Great  War.  The  Hebrews  knew  this.  Amos  knew 
it.  But  Amos  not  only  saw  it  as  a  possibility,  he  felt  it 
as  a  practical  certainty  and  looked  forward  to  it  with 


22        AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

horror.  He  saw  no  way  of  escape  for  his  people.  They 
would  be  captured  and  slaughtered  by  Assyria,  as  a  help- 
less lamb  might  be  caught  and  devoured  by  a  wild  beast 
(Amos  3.  12). 

This  conviction  on  the  part  of  Amos  undoubtedly  had 
its  influence  upon  his  message  and  will  account  in  part 
for  its  sternness  and  vigor.  This  is  another  illustration 
of  the  way  history  and  revelation  work  together.  It  is  not 
enough  to  say  that  the  message  of  Amos  was  divinely  in- 
spired. This  is  quite  true,  but  it  hardly  pictures  the  prac- 
tical side  of  the  truth.  It  should  also  be  said  that  the 
message  of  Amos  was  inspired  by  what  he  saw  in  the  life 
of  his  people  and  by  what  he  recognized  as  a  national 
danger.  Amos  went  even  beyond  this:  he  not  only  saw 
the  danger  but  regarded  it  as  having  a  divine  meaning.  He 
interpreted  it  as  growing  out  of  God's  purpose  of  punish- 
ment (Amos  2.  14-16;  3.  13-15;  5.  27;  6.  14). 

Was  Amos  a  Pacifist? 

This  attitude  that  Amos  takes  toward  a  foreign  foe  de- 
serves a  moment's  attention.  The  nation  of  Israel,  even  in 
its  days  of  greatest  expansion,  was  a  comparatively  small 
affair.  It  was  only  one  of  a  group  of  little  states  that  lay 
between  the  Arabian  desert  and  the  Mediterranean  Sea. 
Each  little  state  had  its  own  ambitions,  political  policies, 
religions,  wars.  No  one  of  them  could  ever  have  any  as- 
surance of  an  enduring  peace,  for  it  could  never  know  when 
one  of  the  neighboring  states,  or  a  group  of  them,  would 
start  out  on  the  warpath.  So  that  Israel,  along  with  her 
neighbors,  lived  almost  constantly  on  the  defensive  and 
was  engaged  in  frequent  wars. 

In  view  of  this  situation  any  religious  leader  would 
necessarily  have  something  to  say  or  do  about  Israel's  foes ; 
and  it  is  in  this  connection  that  Amos  shows  what  a  re- 
markable change  had  come  over  the  spirit  of  Israel's  re- 
ligion during  the  two  hundred  or  more  years  that  Israel 
had  been  a  nation.  In  the  early  days,  when  Samuel,  Saul, 
and  David  were  welding  the  little  state  into  shape,  the 
Hebrews  were  in  almost  continual  conflict  with  their  west- 
em  neighbors,  the  Philistines.     There  were  prophets  in 


THE  TIMES  AND  THE  MAN  23 

those  days  as  well  as  in  the  days  of  Jeroboam  II.  And 
those  early  prophets  had  very  definite  ideas  about  the 
meaning  of  the  Philistine  invasion.  With  no  uncertain 
voice  they  stirred  up  their  fellow  countrymen  to  repel  the 
invader.  The  historical  portions  of  1  Samuel  show  clearly 
that  there  was  no  doubt  in  that  day  that  the  advance  of  an 
enemy  called  for  no  reaction  but  resistance.  There  is  no 
evidence  of  any  idea  that  the  religious  and  social  condi- 
tions among  the  Hebrews  had  anything  to  do  with  a 
foreign  invasion. 

In  the  days  of  Amos  the  prophets  thought  differently. 
When  they  saw  invasion  threatening  their  little  state  they 
understood  it  as  a  call  not  to  resistance  but  to  repentance. 
'^This  threat  of  annihilation  at  the  hand  of  Assyria/' 
said  Amos  in  effect,  "is  Jehovah's  warning  to  you  to  reno- 
vate the  whole  social  fabric:  reform  your  religion,  your 
politics,  your  business  and  your  social  life.''  In  the  early 
days  the  Spirit  of  Jehovah  was  understood  as  calling  men 
to  arm  for  battle;  but  Amos  understands  the  same  Spirit 
to  call  rather  for  purification  of  the  national  life.  It  was 
a  long  step  from  the  picture  of  a  Saul  in  1  Sam.  11.  6,  7  to 
the  picture  of  an  Amos  in  Amos  3.  9-12.  But  the  contrast 
between  the  two  shows  clearly  the  direction  of  that  path  of 
righteousness  along  which  Jehovah  was  leading  his  people. 

It  has  just  been  said  that  it  was  a  long  step  from  Saul 
to  Amos.  It  was  a  long  step,  but  not  the  last  one.  It 
would  be  most  inadequate  to-day  to  suppose  that  warfare 
alone  indicated  the  wickedness  of  either  side.  Questions 
about  both  parties  to  the  conflict  must  be  asked  and  an- 
swered if  there  is  to  be  fair  treatment  for  both.  But  such 
questions  are  unsuspected  until  raised  by  a  growing  ap- 
preciation of  the  will  and  character  of  God.  Prophets 
and  teachers  who  came  after  Amos  led  men  to  still  wider 
views  of  men  and  nations.  Other  principles,  building  on 
those  announced  by  Amos  but  reaching  even  further  than 
his,  were  yet  to  be  proclaimed. 

The  book  of  Amos  clearly  shows  that  his  point  of  view 
was  not  widely  accepted  by  those  who  heard  the  prophet 
propose  it.  But  Amos  said  it,  and  it  took  root.  The  root 
has  grown  slowly  and  uninvitingly,  ^^ike  a  root  out  of  a 


24   AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDER 

dry  ground/'  and  but  few  men  desire  it  even  yet.  The  days 
may  be  long  and  many  before  its  proper  fruit  blesses  the 
world.  Who  has  wisdom  and  courage  suflBcient  to  cultivate 
this  fruit? 

Questions  to  Discuss 

If  Amos  had  been  brought  up  in  the  city  instead  of  the 
country,  would  he  have  seen  the  luxury,  the  poverty,  and 
the  religious  ceremonies  as  clearly  as  he  did? 

To  what  extent  do  ease  and  comfort,  peace  and  quietness, 
indicate  God's  favor? 

Has  the  modern  recognition  of  the  social  side  of  Chris- 
tianity been  due,  to  any  extent,  to  the  development  of 
modern  social  life  ?  Consider  here  the  influence  of  popular 
education,  of  world-wide  trade,  and  the  information  made 
possible  by  telegraph  and  the  daily  press. 

Why  does  Amos  seem  unimpressed  by  the  real  greatness 
of  Jeroboam  and  his  reign? 

Under  what  circumstances  does  patriotism  cease  to  be 
true  religion? 

Is  there  any  difference  between  a  100  per  cent  American 
and  a  100  per  cent  Christian? 

To  what  extent  is  a  preacher's  popularity  a  proof  of  the 
truth  of  his  message? 


CHAPTEE  III 

THE  GOD  OF  NATIONS  AND  OF  MEN 

Amos  1.  3  to  2.  5^ 

Does  God  Love  an  Enemy  Nation? 

From  the  clays  of  George  Washington  to  the  present 
time  the  question  has  not  been  settled  whether  the  United 
States  should  have  any  part  at  all  in  European  affairs. 
Eelations  between  nations  are  a  subject  that  has  never  yet 
been  placed  upon  an  enduring  basis.  Nations  are  natu- 
rally suspicious  of  each  other.  Our  beliefs  in  God  as  the 
God  of  the  whole  earth  and  in  the  idea  that  normally  men 
should  live  at  peace  with  each  other  have  had  only  slight 
influence  in  determining  our  foreign  policies.  In  view  of 
this  obvious  fact  it  need  cause  no  surprise  that  in  the  days 
of  Amos  the  common  relation  between  nations  was  one  of 
enmity. 

This  feeling  was  supported  by  the  (to  us)  curious  notion 
that  there  was  no  one  deity  who  had  equal  control  of  all 


iTlie  contents  of  this  interesting  passage  are  no  more  remarkable  than  the 
form  in  which  they  are  expressed.  The  references  to  the  successive  nations  are 
taken  up  in  well-marked  paragraphs,  or  stanzas,  each  one  of  which  opens  and 
closes  with  a  kind  of  refrain.  It  is  evident  that  these  "refrains"  are  poetical 
in  their  cliaracter  and  are  not  to  be  taken  literally.  The  opening  words  "For 
three  ...  for  four"  simply  indicate  that  the  measure  of  iniquity  is  full, 
and  that  punishment  can  no  longer  be  delayed.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  only  one 
transgression  is  specified  in  each  case.  (See  a  similar  use  of  numbers  in  Prov. 
30.  15,  18,  21,  29.)  Similarly  the  words  "I  will  send  a  fire  .  .  .  and  it 
shall  devour"  are  not  intended  to  indicate  a  destructive  catastrophe  of  any  kind. 

This  is  the  kind  of  passage  in  which  the  familiar  division  of  the  Bible  into 
verses  is  particularly  misleading.  Verses  were  devised  originally  as  a  scheme 
by  which  any  part  of  the  Bible  could  be  conveniently  referred  to;  and  this  is 
their  proper  use.  They  were  not  intended  to  offer  texts  complete  in  themselves, 
nor  to  indicate  a  Biblical  outline,  nor  to  destroy  the  continuity  of  a  passage 
(as  in  this  case).  Above  all  it  should  be  remembered  that  they  did  not  appear 
in  the  original  Hebrew  manuscripts. 

25 


26        AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

nations.  Any  particular  deity  was  supposed  to  be  the  deity 
of  a  particular  people.  This  deity  was  worshiped  by  his 
own  people  and  by  them  only.  His  power  was  not  sup- 
posed to  extend  beyond  the  bounds  of  his  own  nation.  This 
belief  was  held  by  the  rank  and  file  of  the  Hebrews,  not 
only  in  the  days  of  Amos  but  long  afterward  as  well. 
Originally  the  term  "God  of  Israel"  was  meant  literally, 
locally,  and  exclusively.  Only  a  few  of  the  more  en- 
lightened leaders  seem  to  have  had  any  other  idea  (see,  for 
example,  1  Sam.  26.  19;  1  Kings  11.  33;  2  Kings  17. 
27-33). 

Amos  was  one  of  the  few,  and  probably  one  of  the  first, 
to  think  of  Jehovah  as  having  any  real  part  in  the  affairs 
of  other  nations.  Such  an  idea  would  appear  wholly 
new  and  strange  to  his  fellow  countrymen ;  and  the  passage 
before  us,  when  Amos  uttered  it,  must  have  been  listened 
to  with  great  surprise.  For  here  Amos  is  calling  a  roll  of 
nations  with  whom  (it  was  commonly  believed)  Jehovah 
had  nothing  to  do ;  yet  Amos  is  saying  that  Jehovah  would 
call  these  other  nations  to  account. 

Amos  does  not  stop  with  the  simple  assertion  of  Je- 
hovah^s  foreign  control;  he  is  convinced  that  Jehovah  is 
concerned  with  the  behavior  of  these  nations  toward  each 
other.  They  are  not  there  simply  as  pawns  in  a  huge  game, 
to  be  swept  off  the  board  at  the  will  of  the  player;  they 
have  their  own  aims  and  accountabilities,  and  Amos,  with 
true  prophetic  daring,  asserts  that  their  accountability  is 
to  Jehovali.  Note  that  the  nations  referred  to  make  up 
practically  the  whole  of  the  political  world  in  which  Amos 
lived;  and  that  he  is  really  claiming  Jehovah  as  the  God 
of  his  world,  and  not  only  of  his  nation.  From  this  stand- 
point he  sees  that  Jehovah's  interest  and  concern  extend 
to  the  relations  which  these  nations  hold  toward  each 
other. 

Does  all  this  seem  foreign  and  distant — a  matter  of 
ancient  history  and  a  dead  past?  If  so,  consider  the  re- 
ligious and  patriotic  ideas  that  found  expression  among  us 
during  the  great  war.  As  a  matter  of  theory,  of  "faith,'' 
the  Christian  nations  that  fought  so  bitterly  believed  in 
God  as  the  God  of  the  whole  earth.    Yet  each  one  of  them 


THE  GOD  OF  NATIONS  27 

prayed  to  God  as  if  he  were  the  God  of  that  nation  alone. 
God  was  appealed  to  as  a  particular  and  partisan  Deity — 
powerful  enough,  it  is  true,  to  vanquish  his  foes,  but  in- 
terested chiefly,  if  not  exclusively,  in  the  particular  nation 
concerned. 

Was  there  not  a  conspicuous  rarity  of  prayers  indicating 
that  God  was  believed  to  have  a  concern  for  the  relations 
of  these  nations  with  each  other?  He  was  appealed  to  for 
victory,  but  not  for  help  to  refrain  from  mistreatment  of 
the  enemy.  We  all  rested  stupidly  down  on  the  old  level 
of  winning  the  victory,  blind  to  the  fact  that  the  way  na- 
tions behave  toward  each  other  is,  in  the  sight  of  God,  of 
more  consequence  than  the  supremacy  of  our  own  or  any 
other  nation. 

This  line  of  thought  leads  still  further.  The  discussion 
of  the  League  of  Nations  raised  many  questions  about  the 
rights  and  relations  of  nations  among  themselves.  At 
times  it  has  seemed  that  a  true  internationalism  was  almost 
within  reach.  ^'Internationalism"  is,  of  course,  too  modern 
a  word  to  apply  to  the  position  which  Amos  takes,  but  he 
was  actually  taking  the  first  step  along  the  path  that  leads 
to  it;  for  no  real  internationalism  can  be  built  upon  a 
basis  that  omits  the  larger  dictates  of  human  equity  or 
attempts  to  build  itself  solely  on  the  basis  of  power  and 
selfish  advantage.  Faith  in  the  God  of  Amos  means  faith 
in  a  God  of  the  world  as  a  whole,  and  not  faith  in  a  parti- 
san or  selfish  God.  Such  a  faith  sees  all  nations  as  mem- 
bers of  a  world  family.  Only  in  such  a  faith  can  a  true 
internationalism  be  established. 

It  is  even  easier  for  nations  than  for  individuals  to  be- 
come self-centered,  to  seek  political  power  and  commercial 
advantage  under  the  banner  of  a  patriotism  that  exalts 
nationality  at  the  expense  of  humanity.  There  is  a  false 
patriotism  that  has  too  often  been  either  a  cloak  or  an  ex- 
cuse for  plans  and  practices  that,  in  their  narrowness  and 
selfishness,  are  even  more  foreign  to  the  spirit  of  Christ 
than  they  would  have  been  to  the  spirit  of  Amos.  It  is 
against  this  sort  of  thing  that  the  words  of  Amos  are  really 
directed ;  as  it  is  toward  an  ideal  internationalism  that  they 
really  open  the  way. 


28        AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDER 

Does  Waefare  Excuse  Brutality? 

Amos  teaches  that  Jehovah  is  God  of  the  nations  not 
only  in  a  political  sense  but  also  in  a  sense  that  reaches 
deeper  than  politics  because  it  concerns  men  as  human 
beings.  The  acts  here  condemned  include:  brutal  torture 
of  the  vanquished  (1.  3) ;  town  populations  carried  captive 
wholesale  (1.  6,  9)  ;  disregard  of  treaty  obligations  (1.  9)  ; 
implacable  hatred  (1.  11)  ;  atrocious  treatment  of  women 
(1.  13)  ;  desecration  of  graves  (2.  1).  In  view  of  the  re- 
ports that  are  not  yet  forgotten  which  came  to  us  from 
the  battlefields  of  Europe,  these  atrocities  have  a  strangely 
familiar  sound.  And,  despite  our  horror  at  them,  they 
were  done  only  yesterday,  and  by  "Christian"  nations! 
If  Amos  denounced  such  things  nearly  three  thousand 
years  ago,  when  brutalities  were  taken  for  granted  as  neces- 
sary evils,  what  terms  would  he  have  found  adequate  for 
the  twentieth  century  of  the  Christian  era?  Our  lesson 
is  a  testimony  to  a  barbarity  that  has  not  yet  disappeared, 
as  well  as  to  a  humanity  that  showed  itself  as  long  ago  as 
in  the  days  of  this  ancient  prophet.  Indeed,  from  one 
point  of  view  a  large  part  of  mankind's  career  has  been  a 
struggle  between  these  two  impulses. 

A  certain  measure  of  excuse  may  be  found  for  the  people 
to  whom  Amos  was  speaking.  They  recognized  in  such 
acts  the  natural  accompaniments  of  warfare.  The  Orien- 
tal is  proverbially  cruel  as  a  conqueror,  and  probably  no 
one  ever  supposed  that  such  acts  were  not  to  be  taken  as  a 
matter  of  course.  The  Old  Testament  indicates  clearly  the 
readiness  of  both  people  and  rulers  to  follow  these  methods 
(see  Judges  1.  6;  8.  16;  1  Sam.  15.  3)  ;  and  they  believed 
that  they  had  divine  approval.  But  here  a  new  note  is 
struck  and  a  new  ideal  proposed  in  the  matter  of  human 
relations. 

Before  any  general  sentiment  against  cruelty  can  be 
developed,  glaring  instances  must  be  recognized  and  de- 
nounced. Before  "man's  inhumanity  to  man"  can  be 
brought  under  the  control  of  high  principle  in  this  regard, 
men  must  be  shocked  into  attention  by  a  sudden  realiza- 
tion of  the  enormity  of  extreme  cases.    Amos  had  been  thus 


THE  GOD  OF  NATIONS  29 

awakened  and  shocked;  and  in  horror  of  what  he  saw  he 
felt  himself  called  to  be  the  spokesman  of  a  new  order 
wherein  interests  of  politics  and  power  would  have  to  give 
way  before  the  interests  of  men  as  men. 

This  idea  was  so  new  that  even  Amos  himself  had  not 
wholly  adjusted  himself  to  it,  and  he  was  not  strictly  logi- 
cal in  its  application.  He  seems  not  to  have  noticed  that 
the  punishments  with  which  he  threatens  these  different 
offenders  would  involve  the  very  acts  which  he  condemns. 
He  ignores  the  fact  that  the  captivity  with  which,  for  in- 
stance, he  threatens  Syria  (1.  5)  or  the  extermination  with 
which  he  threatens  the  Philistines  (1.  8)  could  not  in  that 
day  have  been  carried  out  without  the  cruelties  inseparable 
from  ancient  warfare.  It  is  a  question  whether  Amos  was 
in  a  position  to  think  of  any  other  way  to  punish  a  nation 
than  by  defeat  in  war.  The  essential  thing  is  that  he  saw 
the  inhumanities  and  knew  them  to  be  odious  alike  to  men 
and  God ;  and  as  such  he  denounced  them. 

If  the  denunciations  uttered  by  Amos  had  been  directed 
solely  against  the  enemies  of  Israel,  he  might  be  suspected 
of  that  easy  patriotism  which  satisfies  itself  in  scorn  of  the 
foreigner.  But  the  first  three  verses  of  chapter  2  do  not 
involve^  Israel.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Moab's  victim,  Edom, 
was  one  of  Israel's  bitterest  foes;  yet  Amos  applies  his 
principles  in  this  case  as  vigorously  as  when  Israel  herself 
was  the  sufferer.  In  denouncing  acts  that  are  offenses 
against  a  common  humanity,  rather  than  against  nations 
as  such,  he  takes  his  stand  beyond  and  above  the  field  of 
racial  hatreds  and  national  ambitions. 

It  is  easier  to  realize  the  advance  involved  in  this  step 
when  we  consider  our  own  attitude  in  the  late  war.  ^lany 
of  us  took  for  granted  that  a  state  of  war  carried  with  it 
its  own  justification  for  any  cruelty.  Our  horror,  for  in- 
stance, at  the  use  of  poison  gas  was  quickly  quieted  when  we 
found  that  our  own  side  could  make  it  and  use  it.  Of 
course  this  was  war ;  and  Sherman's  description  of  war  has 
never  called  seriously  for  correction.  But  it  was  war  too  that 
Amos  was  talking  about.  He  would  not  have  said,  "These 
brutalities  are  necessary  in  war,  and  we  must  put  up  with 
them";  but,  "If  war  means  such  inhumanities,  stop  war/' 


30   AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

Amos  Teaches  Religion 

While  Amos  proclaimed  a  God  of  nations  who  was  also  a 
God  of  humanity,  it  would  be  misleading  to  give  the  im- 
pression that  he  was  interested  primarily  in  politics  or 
even  primarily  in  the  principles  of  humanity  as  such.  He 
was  interested  in  these;  but  above  them,  explaining  them 
and  including  them,  he  placed  religion.  He  was  concerned 
above  all  else  with  the  character  of  God  and  with  the  divine 
will.  If  he  referred  to  the  political  situations  of  his  own 
nation  or  of  other  nations,  it  was  only  because  he  saw  in 
these  a  field  in  which  God  himself  was  active,  and  in  which 
God's  will  must  rule.  If  he  denounced  actions  that  we 
would  regard  as  offenses  against  humanity,  even  when 
these  actions  were  directed  against  an  enemy  nation,  it  was 
only  because  he  had  been  thrilled  with  a  new  vision  of 
God's  regard  for  man  as  man  and  had  seen  the  divine  im- 
portance of  a  right  behavior  of  men  toward  each  other. 
The  question  ^' Who  is  my  neighbor  ?"  in  the  great  parable 
of  Jesus  is  really  anticipated  in  spirit  by  Amos  with  re- 
gard to  nations.  In  a  word,  his  message  on  this  point  was 
"Who  is  my  (national)  neighbor?"  It  is  not  an  easy  ques- 
tion for  nations  to  answer. 

For  him  it  was  religion  that  was  fundamental,  and  it  is 
abundantly  clear  that  he  regarded  his  whole  message  as  a 
message  of  religion.  He  was  not  assuming  the  role  of 
statesman  or  teacher  of  ethical  culture,  neither  was  he  of- 
fering a  gospel  of  humanity,  although  all  these  elements 
appear  in  his  message;  he  was  first  and  foremost  a  re- 
ligious teacher.  As  such  he  demanded  a  hearing,  and  only 
as  such  has  he  a  claim  on  us  to-day. 

It  is  true  that  in  these  ideas  he  was  leading  the  way  to- 
ward a  much  larger  view  of  religion  than  the  one  current 
in  his  day.  Indeed,  the  expansion  of  religion  to  include 
the  affairs  of  everyday  life — the  everyday  life  of  business 
and  of  politics — is  still  a  novelty.  Yet  for  Amos  these  were 
the  fields  in  which  religion  must  operate,  and  their  re- 
ligious character  rested  back  upon  the  character  and  will 
of  God. 

To  know  God  as  Amos  knew  him — as  a  God  of  honor  and 


THE  GOD  OF  NATIONS  31 

s 
equity — means  to  realize  that  men  cannot  be  acceptable  in 
the  sight  of  this  God  unless  they  themselves  possess  and 
exercise  the  same  principles  of  equity  and  of  honor.  This 
reflection  of  the  life  of  God  in  every  aspect  of  the  lives  of 
men  was  for  Amos  the  only  true  religion,  alongside  which 
a  religion  that  contented  itself  with  formal  worship,  ob- 
servance of  sacred  days  and  seasons,  stated  offerings,  and 
attendance  at  the  temple  was  a  worthless  substitute.  Not 
that  these  things  in  themselves  were  wrong,  but  that  they 
were  not  of  the  essence  of  man^s  most  vital  acknowledg- 
ment of  the  true  God. 

Questions  to  Discuss 

To  what  extent  do  national  victories  indicate  national 
virtue  ? 

What  part  has  religion  to  play  in  the  development  of 
an  enduring  League  of  Nations? 

Is  the  chief  argument  against  war  its  cost  in  money  or 
its  cost  in  men  ? 

Can  there  be  one  without  the  other? 

Would  the  religion  taught  by  Amos  involve  any  differ- 
ence in  present-day  politics? 

Has  it  any  bearing  on  the  character  of  candidates  or  on 
the  acts  of  office  holders? 

What  advantage  or  disadvantage  would  a  modern 
preacher  have,  as  compared  with  Amos,  in  the  modern 
separation  between  church  and  state? 


CHAPTEE  rV 

THE  CHOSEN  PEOPLE 

Amos  2.  6-16;  3.  1,  2;  6.  1,  2;  9.  7 

A  Patriot  Who  Was  Also  a  Critic  (2.  6-16) 

We  are  familiar  with  the  idea  that  the  Jewish  nation 
has  been  called  a  chosen  people.  That  is,  we  accept  the 
statement  in  its  reference  to  the  Jews  of  Bible  times,  as 
part  of  the  Bible  teachings.  But  at  the  present  time  few 
Christians  regard  the  modern  Jews  as  a  chosen  race; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  many  a  Christian  regards  his 
own  nation  as  the  one  really  ''chosen"  for  place  and  in- 
fluence in  the  world  of  to-day.  The  words  of  Amos  which 
make  up  the  present  lesson  give  the  interpretation  Amos 
placed  upon  this  idea  of  a  divine  "choosing.^' 

He  has  adroitly  enlisted  his  hearers'  attention  in  his 
rebukes  of  other  nations,  and  now,  in  turning  to  his  own, 
he  has  caught  them  unawares.  They  cannot  charge  him 
with  being  unpatriotic,  for  he  has  denounced  the  national 
foes.  Yet  he  has  shown  a  strict  neutrality  in  defending 
some  of  these  foes  against  others.  If  Amos  has  reserved 
his  sharpest  and  most  searching  criticism  for  his  own 
people,  even  more  will  a  Christian  conscience,  without 
compromise  or  cowardice,  apply  Christian  standards  to  the 
unchristian  aspects  of  his  own  nation's  life  to-day. 

The  list  of  crimes  charged  against  other  nations  in  the 
earlier  part  of  Amos'  address  may  profitably  be  compared 
with  the  list  here  charged  against  the  Hebrews  themselves. 
They  are  all  too  common  even  yet.  Consider  them:  ex- 
tortion, brutal  treatment  of  the  weaker  classes,  shameless 
immorality  on  the  part  of  both  fathers  and  sons,  suppres- 
sion of  all  original  and  vigorous  religious  character  (2. 
6-8).  Such  conditions  inevitably  lead  a  people  toward 
ruin.  They  undermine  the  firmness  and  integrity  of 
national  character  and  infect  the  whole  social  body.    They 

32 


THE  CHOSEISr  PEOPLE  33 

are  perpetrated  by  those  who  have  power  against  those 
who  are  defenseless. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  to  raise  a  protest  against  such 
conditions  is  to  invite  the  charge  that  one  is  a  muckraker, 
a  trouble-maker,  a  bolshevist.  Yet  it  is  a  fair  question 
whether  the  criticism  and  correction  of  such  iniquitous 
conditions  should  be  left  entirely  to  the  oppressed  and  dis- 
contented themselves.  Is  injustice  to  go  unchallenged 
until  its  victims  revolt,  or  shall  champions  of  justice  dare 
to  demand  a  purification  of  national  life  in  the  interest  of 
national  integrity?  In  such  a  case  is  silence  or  protest 
the  truest  patriotism?  What  the  anarchist  or  the  revolu- 
tionist may  do  in  sheer  joy  of  destruction  must  be  under- 
taken by  loyal  patriots  in  self-sacrificing  devotion  and  in  a 
true  spirit  of  corrective  construction,  as  Amos  does  in  this 
instance. 

The  difference  will  depend  on  the  spirit  in  which  the 
criticism  is  made  and  the  end  it  is  designed  to  serve.  I 
may  throw  a  man  down  out  of  sheer  malice  or  to  save  him 
from  being  run  over  by  a  locomotive.  In  both  cases  the 
act  is  the  same,  but  the  motives  are  as  far  apart  as  the 
poles.  A  house  may  be  blown  up  by  a  malicious  bomb 
thrower  or  by  a  fire  department  that  in  this  act  will  save 
half  a  city  from  destruction  by  fire.  In  both  cases  the 
acts  are  the  same,  but  the  ends  sought  and  served  are  ut- 
terly foreign  to  each  other. 

The  voice  of  criticism — criticism  of  national  institu- 
tions, of  economic  conditions,  of  labor,  or  of  capital — may 
come  from  an  anarchist  or  a  patriot;  but  the  hope  of  the 
nation  depends  on  our  ability  and  our  willingness  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  two.  Keenest  criticism  may  express 
the  loftiest  patriotism,  and  woe  to  the  people  who  attempt 
to  silence  this  kind  of  a  critic !  They  are  preparing  for 
themselves  the  fate  that  Amos  saw  awaiting  his  own  na- 
tion when  he,  the  true  patriot,  challenged  the  heartless 
prosperity  of  his  own  day. 

A  Prophetic  Paradox  (3.  1,  2) 

There  is  a  paradox  here  which  Amos  utters  in  the  most 
drastic  fashion.     He  apparently  made  no  effort  to  soften 


34    AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

his  message.  He  made  no  concessions  to  the  feelings  that 
might  be  hurt  by  Y\-hat  he  said.  And  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  he  made  himself  greatly  disliked  by  the  way  he  put 
things.  Yet  there  are  times  when  the  only  way  to  bring 
unpleasant  and  unwelcome  facts  to  notice  is  by  shocking 
the  hearers  into  attention.  Of  course  it  is  much  easier  to 
recognize  this  in  connection  with  people  and  situations 
that  have  long  ago  passed  into  history.  We  ourselves 
usually  resent  such  shocks,  defending  ourselves  against 
them  and  denouncing  the  man  who  makes  them.  It  was 
undoubtedly  the  same  way  in  the  days  of  Amos.  The 
amazing  statement  that  Amos  here  makes  is  directed 
against  the  current  understanding  of  the  idea  expressed  in 
the  title  of  the  lesson.  No  nation  that  regards  itself  as 
the  special  favorite  or  representative  of  the  Almighty  holds 
this  idea  in  any  but  a  sense  favorable  to  its  own  self-esteem. 
It  is  "chosen"  for  happiness,  for  prosperity,  for  power. 

Amos  here  takes  the  familiar  and  popular  statement 
that  had  evidently  become  a  national  creed  in  his  day — a 
kind  of  ancient  Declaration  of  Independence :  "You  only 
have  I  known  of  all  the  families  of  the  earth"  (3.  2). 
How  comforting  !  How  flattering  !  What  a  fine  acknowl- 
edgment of  that  superiority  to  other  nations  which  many 
a  nation  has  believed  true  of  itself !  Amos  is  orthodox  and 
patriotic  up  to  this  point,  but  after  this  the  deluge: 
''Therefore  will  I  punish  you  for  all  your  iniquities/' 
Could  anyone  imagine  such  heresy  and  such  treachery? 
What  dismay  for  those  who  believed  him !  What  out- 
rageous nonsense  for  those  who  refused  to  understand! 
"Because  God  has  chosen  us,  he  will  overlook  all  our 
faults" — so  thought  the  people.  "No,"  said  Amos;  "for 
that  very  reason  he  will  punish  you."  The  people  took  God 
for  a  patron  Saint ;  Amos  thinks  of  him  as  the  great  Critic 
and  the  great  Corrector,  whose  rebukes  and  whose  punish- 
ments are  the  evidences  of  his  educative  purpose  and  his 
upright  love. 

This  word  "therefore"  is  the  pivot  upon  which  turns 
the  whole  question  of  what  God  desires  and  man  deserves. 
It  is  based  on  the  fundamental  principle  in  Amos'  thought 
that  for  God  to  choose  a  nation  means  that  that  nation 


THE  CHOSEN  PEOPLE  35 

must  rise  to  the  standards  God  proposes,  and  not  that  God 
must  be  brought  down  to  the  petty  standards  of  a  selfish 
people,  who  look  upon  God  as  a  dignified  but  subservient 
promoter  of  their  own  little  business  affairs.  And  the 
divine  standards  concern  the  welfare  of  the  whole  people, 
and  not  the  comfort  of  a  favored  few. 

The  Blindness  of  Ease  (6.  1,  2) 

Men  who  hold  positions  of  eminence  and  ease  are  often 
very  blind  to  facts  seen  quite  clearly  by  others.  The  ease 
and  confidence  of  the  people  referred  to  in  6.  1,  2  took  the 
familiar  form  seen  in  much  national  pride  to-day.  They 
are  sure  of  their  country's  strength  and  consequently  of 
their  own  security.  They  are  equally  sure  of  their  coun- 
try's superiority  to  others.  They  are  sure  that  disasters 
which  overtook  other  nations  will  never  harm  their  own. 
But  they  are  blind — stupidly,  childishly  blind.  They  do 
not  try  to  see,  and  they  do  not  wish  to  see. 

"Open  thou  mine  eyes,"  wrote  the  psalmist,  "that  I  may 
behold  .  .  ."  (Psa.  119.  18).  The  answer  to  such  a 
prayer  is  as  likely  to  bring  dismay  as  it  is  delight.  When 
the  things  beheld  are  unsuspected,  when  they  contradict 
one's  dearest  hopes,  when  they  reveal  error  in  what  was 
supposed  to  be  truth,  when  they  show  weakness  and  decay 
where  there  were  supposedly  strength  and  vigor,  the  prayer 
becomes  a  real  test  of  courage  and  of  faith.  Who  dare 
risk  the  vision  of  more  truth  than  he  has  yet  beheld? 
He  can  have  no  assurance  that  the  later  vision  will  con- 
firm the  earlier.  When  his  eyes  are  truly  opened,  he  may 
see  that  he  had  been  terribly  wrong  rather  than  comfort- 
ably right.    It  is  a  dangerous  prayer. 

Sometimes  the  new  light  is  forced  upon  those  who  "love 
darkness  rather  than  light  because  their  deeds  are  evil" 
(John  3.  19),  and  here  Amos  ruthlessly  tears  from  the 
eyes  of  these  careless  and  confident  ones  the  wrappings  of 
selfishness  and  conceit.  They  did  not  need  to  look  far  to 
realize  their  own  danger.  There  was  the  city  of  Calneh  in 
northern  Syria,  or  Hamath  the  splendid,  or  even  the  well- 
known  Philistine  city  of  Gath.  These  places  were  at  least 
as  important  and  as  opulent  as  their  own  Samaria  or  Zion ; 


3G    AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDER 

yet  see  how  they  were  overtaken,  conquered,  and  brought 
low.  Their  wealth  did  not  defend  them,  nor  their  emi- 
nence deliver  them.  And  Amos  here  holds  them  up  as 
warnings  of  the  true  results  of  iniquitous  living.  He  is 
here  doing  the  kind  of  thing  that  every  honorable  and  up- 
right friend  of  one's  people  must  do.  But  to  do  it  with 
any  real  power  one  must  not  only  have  insight  and  courage : 
he  must  also  be  above  the  reproach  of  pettiness  and  parti- 
sanship. 

The  God  of  All  Nations  (9.  7) 

Still  another  word  of  Amos  speaks  this  critical  spirit 
which  is  nevertheless  a  spirit  of  profoundest  loyalty — a 
spirit  whose  apparent  harshness  is  only  the  utterance  of 
deepest  desire  that  the  people  might  be  awakened  to  God's 
real  desire  for  them  and  their  own  true  relation  to  him. 

If  it  were  spoken  by  an  American  in  modern  times,  it 
might  run :  "Are  you  not  as  the  Chinese  to  me,  0  Ameri- 
cans? Did  I  not  unite  your  thirteen  colonies  into  one 
great  nation,  build  up  the  Canadians  to  an  imperial  do- 
minion, and  make  the  Germans  a  world  power?" 

One  of  the  experiences  of  life,  often  bitter  but  always  il- 
luminating, is  the  discovery  that  others  have  the  same 
rights  and  privileges  as  oneself.  "Through  childhood  and 
early  youth  one  accepts  the  easy  idea  that  God  is  his  un- 
conditional support  and  defender,  and  that  other  people 
are  under  obligations  to  put  into  effect  this  good  will  of 
God  toward  oneself.  If  these  other  people  do  this,  they 
are  good;  if  they  do  not,  they  are  bad.  Then,  suddenly, 
there  comes  to  us  the  disconcerting  realization  that  the 
others  have  the  same  rights  as  ourselves.  They  too  regard 
themselves  as  the  center  of  a  circle  of  which  we  form  a 
part,  and  which  they  suppose  is  to  minister  to  them,  and 
thus  carry  out  God's  will.  This  realization  is  the  awaken- 
ing in  us  of  the  ethical  principle  that  means  a  feeling  for 
others,  for  mankind."^ 

Difficult  as  this  experience  is  in  the  case  of  individuals, 
it  is  even  harder  for  nations.  One's  love  of  country  has 
in  it  enougli  idealism  to  obscure  its  true  character  from  any 

iNiebergaU. 


THE  CHOSEN  PEOPLE  37 

but  a  truly  awakened  conscience.  Much  religion,  so  far 
as  it  relates  to  one^s  country,  often  goes  no  further  than  a 
belief  that  one^s  own  country  has  preference  and  precedence 
in  the  sight  of  God.  But  here  again  Amos  is  unflinching 
and  inexorable.  True  to  that  high  ethical  principle  which 
is  even  yet  beyond  us,  he  asserts  that  to  God  it  is  all  one 
whichever  nation  is  concerned — Negroes,  Philistines,  Syri- 
ans, or  Hebrews.    He  is  the  God  of  all  nations. 

Amos  has  here  emancipated  the  thought  of  God  from  its 
narrow  connection  with  a  particular  people.  God  ceases  to 
be  a  private  patron  and  becomes  the  God  of  all  the  world. 
This  conception  marked  an  epoch  in  man's  long  progress 
toward  a  knowledge  of  God.  It  anticipates  that  thought 
of  God  as  Father  which  is  one  of  the  most  precious  reve- 
lations of  the  Christian  faith.  In  its  light  the  history  of 
the  world  will  one  day  be  written,  not  as  a  history  of  the 
world  as  seen  by  and  in  the  interest  of  American  or  British, 
French  or  German,  but  from  the  point  of  view  of  man  and 
of  God. 

From  Amos'  point  of  view  a  chosen  people  must  be  a 
choosing  people.  The  divine  choice  is  indicated  and  vin- 
dicated by  those  actions  on  the  part  of  the  people  which 
show  them  as  choosing  the  things  which  God  desires.  And 
it  is  further  clear  that  Amos  believed  God  to  desire  such 
actions  because  his  own  character  would  have  led  him  to 
act  in  the  way  Amos  set  forth.  God  was  no  arbitrary  tyrant 
demanding  obedience  for  the  sake  of  exercising  his  own 
authority  and  glorifying  his  own  power;  he  was,  in  his 
own  nature,  just  and  kind,  and  his  desire  for  men  was  that 
they  should  be  and  act  like  himself.  He  chose  them  that 
they  might  choose  him. 

Questions  to  Discuss 

How  far  is  criticism  of  national  institutions  compatible 
with  patriotism? 

Does  God  punish  nations  to-day  ?  If  so,  do  such  punish- 
ments indicate  these  nations  to  be  God's  people? 

In  what  sense  were  the  Hebrews  God's  people?  Whose 
people  were  the  Assyrians? 

Are  there  any  grounds  for  supposing  that  God  approves 


38    AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

the  present  form  of  government  of  the  United  States? 
What  are  they? 

If  our  God  is  the  God  of  all  nations,  what  must  be  our 
attitude  toward  all  other  nations?  If  a  "chosen  people'^ 
must  be  a  "choosing  people/'  how  can  a  nation  show  that 
it  chooses  God? 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  DECEITFULNESS  OF  RICHES 
Amos  3.  9-11;  4.  1-3;  6.  3-6 

A  Menace  to  National  Vigor  (3.  9-11) 

If  one  of  us  had  lived  in  Palestine  in  the  days  of  Amos 
and  had  wanted  to  inquire  into  the  state  of  the  country, 
to  whom  should  one  have  gone?  To  some  ignorant  la- 
borer? To  some  slave  woman?  Of  course  not.  Then,  as 
now,  he  would  have  gone  to  some  leading  merchant  or 
government  official.  These  are  the  men  who  are  regarded 
as  representing  the  country  and  as  really  directing  its  af- 
fairs; and,  of  course,  this  is  largely  true.  But  it  is  fair 
to  ask,  '^What  proportion  of  the  population  do  these  con- 
spicuous individuals  represent,  and  on  what  do  they  base 
their  right  to  act  as  representatives  V' 

In  our  own  time  it  is  quite  clear  that,  despite  our  demo- 
cratic system  of  election  by  ballot,  the  men  finally  to  be 
voted  for  are  but  few  in  number,  especially  for  the  higher 
offices,  and  even  these  few  are  only  too  often  put  forward 
by  powerful  influences  that  are  far  more  concerned  about 
serving  their  own  interests  than  about  serving  the  inter- 
ests of  the  public. 

As  a  consequence  the  answers  such  men  might  give  to 
the  question  proposed  above  would  represent  the  views  of 
only  a  part  of  the  whole  nation.  Speaking  for  that  part, 
these  contemporaries  of  the  prophet  would  have  told  us 
that  business  was  booming,  prospects  were  excellent,  and 
the  country  was  never  so  prosperous.  If  they  spoke  for 
themselves,  this  would  have  been  true,  but  it  would  have 
left  quite  out  of  account  the  many  whose  lives  were  spent 
in  unconsidered  and  unmeasured  toil — men,  women,  and 
children  whose  work  was  not  won  by  love  nor  inspired  by  a 
promise  of  ease,  but  forced  by  the  fear  of  poverty.  And  these 
hosts  of  toilers  had  no  time,  no  incentive,  no  ability,  to  se- 

39 


40    AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

lect  and  to  secure  representatives  of  their  own.  They 
simply  had  nothing  to  say.  It  is  the  tragedy  of  the  poor 
that  they  are  unorganized  and  inarticulate.  They  are  the 
ones  who  pay  the  real  price  of  advertised  prosperity;  and 
back  of  all  national  prosperities  and  securities  that  the 
world  has  known  down  to  the  present  day  stand  the  mute 
hosts  of  those  who  toil  and  endure,  but  who  may  not  enjoy. 

When  tumults  break  out,  because  some  act  of  oppression 
has  bitten  more  deeply  for  a  moment,  they  are  vigorously 
and  sternly  suppressed,  with  a  great  glow  of  righteous  in- 
dignation against  lawlessness  and  against  disturbers  of 
the  public  peace. 

These  conditions  are  not  instances  of  primitive  depravity 
any  more  than  they  are  the  late  development  of  a  money- 
mad  race.  They  have  existed  wherever  and  whenever 
money-madness  has  touched  the  hearts  and  minds  of  men. 
The  madness  shows  itself,  even  in  its  milder  forms,  by  a  pur- 
suit of  the  power  and  the  pleasure  that  wealth  affords  and 
Ijy  a  heartlcssness  that  pays  no  regard  to  the  methods  by 
which  the  wealth  was  gained  or  to  the  sources  from  which 
it  was  produced. 

From  time  to  time  there  arise  men  who  see  these  con- 
ditions in  their  relation  not  to  a  small  group,  but  to  the 
welfare  of  the  people  as  a  whole;  and  against  these  con- 
ditions these  men  raise  courageous  protest.  Their  chal- 
lenge does  not  grow  out  of  a  narrow  class-consciousness 
that  seeks  to  play  off  one  class  against  another  or  to  arouse 
those  who  have  not  to  a  revolt  against  those  who  have. 
They  are  true  patriots  and  they  desire  the  true  life 
and  health  of  their  nation,  that  it  may  take  a  worthy  place 
among  the  nations  of  the  world.  They  are  not  class- 
conscious  so  much  as  nation-conscious,  and  they  see  that 
humanity  and  justice  are  essential  elements  in  a  noble  and 
enduring  national  life.  They  regard  the  ease-loving  self- 
indulgence  of  the  few  at  the  expense  of  the  many  as  a  more 
insidious  danger  and  a  more  threatening  foe  than  the 
armies  of  a  foreign  enemy. 

Amos  was  one  of  the  earliest  to  raise  this  protest,  and 
this  is  the  sort  of  thing  he  was  driving  at  in  the  first  part 
of  our  lesson  (3.  9-11).     If  Amos  had  lived  to-day  and 


THE   DECEITFULNESS   OF  EICHES         41 

had  referred  to  the  United  States,  he  might  have  said: 
"Send  word  to  Mexico  and  to  Canada;  call  them  in  to 
investigate  the  life  of  our  great  cities,  to  see  what  unrest, 
oppression,  and  injustice  are  there.  All  powers  of  defense 
are  destroyed;  the  country  is  ripe  for  plunder.  This  is 
plain  for  anybody  to  see.  Even  foreigners  would  be  justi- 
fied in  condemning  us,  and  if  we  got  into  war  we  would 
stand  no  chance  V 

Despite  the  apparent  disloyalty  of  such  words  the  prin- 
ciple back  of  them  is  a  true  one.  Despite  the  opposition 
inevitably  aroused  by  such  a  message  and  by  such  a  mes- 
senger Amos  was  right.  History  has  been  one  long  series 
of  illustrations  confirming  his  position;  and  no  one  can 
see  a  people's  growing  devotion  to  extravagance  and  amuse- 
ment without  realizing  that  they  are  entering  on  the  path 
that  has  led  to  the  downfall  of  every  empire  the  world  has 
known  and  without  realizing  that  one  who  tries  to  arouse 
the  people  to  their  danger  and  to  stem  the  tide  of  reck- 
lessness is  that  people's  truest  friend. 

It  is  a  lesson  that  nations  have  never  yet  learned,  and  it 
remains  to  be  seen  whether  our  own  country  will  be  suffi- 
ciently self-disciplined  to  be  teachable.  But  one  thing  is 
sure — the  lesson  will  not  and  cannot  be  learned  unless 
everyone  who  realizes  the  situation  gives  himself  courage- 
ously and  unceasingly  to  the  proclamation  of  the  message 
that,  though  uttered  so  long  ago,  is  still  unheeded. 

The  Guilt  of  Women   (4.  1-3) 

The  treatment  of  women  has  long  been  regarded  as  a 
kind  of  touchstone  by  which  to  estimate  the  degree  of 
culture  a  nation  has  reached.  Our  own  country  stands 
alone  in  the  high  respect  paid  to  women.  People  of  other 
nations  are  sometimes  inclined  to  smile  at  us  for  what 
they  consider  our  oversentimental  attitude,  which  seems 
to  them  a  sign  of  weakness  on  the  part  of  the  men  and  a 
situation  unwholesome  for  the  women.  However  that  may 
be,  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  in  this  country  women  have 
a  freedom  and  a  position  granted  nowhere  else. 

Women,  however,  cannot  escape  the  responsibilities  of 
their  privileges,  and  the  way  they  conduct  themselves  is 


42        AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

an  even  more  significant  evidence  of  culture  than  the  way 
they  are  treated  by  men.  If  they  give  themselves  up  to 
extravagance  and  gayety,  if  they  debase  themselves  in  wine 
and  wickedness,  if  they  use  their  influence  on  their  hus- 
bands and  lovers  to  supply  exorbitant  demands,  then,  says 
Amos,  they  share  equally  in  the  guilt  of  the  men  who  hu- 
mor them;  they  are  heartless,  blind,  degraded,  they  are 
mere  (this  is  Amos'  own  harsh  word)  "cattle/' 

One  occasionally  sees  women,  overindulged,  overfed, 
overdressed,  corpulent,  and  coarse,  who  almost  justify 
the  brutal  word  which  Amos  used;  but  the  physical  ap- 
pearance does  not  always  supply  a  true  measure  of  the 
inner  spirit.  Some  of  the  most  famous  sinners  among 
womankind  are  reported  to  have  been  as  beautiful  as  they 
were  depraved. 

The  power  of  a  good  woman  for  good  or  a  wicked  woman 
for  evil  can  hardly  be  overestimated.  The  beautiful  and 
tender  associations  immediately  brought  to  mind  by  the 
words  "mother,"  "sister,"  "wife,"  are  familiar  testimonies 
not  only  to  the  position  woman  holds,  but  even  more  to 
that  ideal  position  we  instinctively  feel  she  ought  to  hold. 
The  lessening  modesty  exhibited  by  girls  and  women  in 
dress,  in  the  social  dance,  in  the  use  of  tobacco,  in  the  lib- 
erties they  allow  their  escorts,  cannot  but  arouse  appre- 
hension in  the  mind  of  anyone  who  knows  that  the  sanc- 
tity of  womanhood  is  a  spiritual  barometer  of  a  nation's 
life  and  who  consequently  realizes  the  wreck  that  awaits 
a  people  whose  women  throw  themselves  away. 

Religion  cannot  ignore  this  situation.  It  has  been  the 
custom  for  some  to  suppose  that  religion  has  nothing  to  do 
with  such  questions.  Religion,  they  think,  should  confine 
itself  to  prayer  and  praise,  to  Bible  reading  and  church  at- 
tendance. The  fact  that  such  questions  are  raised  in  the 
Bible,  however,  shows  very  clearly  the  attitude  of  the  Bible 
writers;  and  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  Amos  regards  the 
proper  treatment  of  these  and  similar  subjects  as  the  very 
essence  of  reliorion. 

Luxury  Triumphant  (6.  3-6) 
In  a  few  words  Amos  has  painted  a  classic  picture  of 


THE   DECEITFULNESS   OF  RICHES         43 

those  who  use  their  wealth  for  what  many  to-day  would 
call  '^a  good  time."  "This  is  the  life — wine,  women,  and 
song."  They  are  all  there — the  wine,  women,  and  song — 
in  that  little  three-verse  pen  picture  that  Amos  drew. 
Wealth,  extravagance,  dissipation  consume  the  time  and 
the  attention  of  this  high  society.  What  banquets  they 
served !  What  luxurious  furniture  !  Wliat  rare  wines  ! 
What  wonderful  music!  The  splendor  of  these  affairs 
filled  the  town.  Everybody  heard  about  them  and  had 
something  to  say  about  them.  Amos  too  heard  about  them 
and  he  too  had  something  to  say — something  as  rough  and 
as  rude  as  he  himself  would  have  seemed  had  he  suddenly 
entered  the  hall  where  a  feast  was  in  progress. 

He  did  more  than  describe  the  feast:  he  saw  the  empty, 
aimless  hearts  and  minds  of  the  feasters.  For  the  country 
at  large  the  feasters  had  no  concern — the  country  on  whose 
security  their  own  security  depended,  the  country  whose 
v/elfare  was  the  essential  condition  of  their  own,  the  coun- 
try whose  poverty  and  distress  they  themselves  helped  to 
create.  "They  are  not  grieved  for  the  affliction  of  Joseph." 
By  "Joseph"  Amos  meant  the  whole  northern  kingdom, 
usually  called  "Israel."  But  what  was  this  "affliction"  of 
which  he  speaks?  Were  there  not  ease  and  wealth  on  all 
sides?  Affliction?  The  happy  and  comfortable  find  it 
hard  to  believe  in  the  distress  of  others.  What  they  do 
not  see  never  bothers  them.  ''They  are  not  grieved."  They 
care  nothing  for  the  distress,  the  poverty,  the  toil,  the 
starvation,  which  paid  for  their  luxury. 

"For  them  the  Ceylon  diver  held  his  breath 
And  went  all  naked  to  the  hungry  shark; 

For  them  his  ears  gushed  blood;  for  them  in  death 
The  seal  on  the  cold  ice  with  piteous  bark 

Lay  full  of  darts;  for  them  alone  did  seethe 
A  thousand  men  in  troubles  wide  and  dark; 

Half-ignorant,  they  turned  an  easy  wheel 

That  set  sharp  wracks  at  work  to  pinch  and  peel."^ 

In  our  modern  democracy,  depending  as  it  does  on  the 
earnest,  intelligent  cooperation  of  all  citizens,  there  are 
many  who  ignore  not  only  the  poor  but  the  country  itself. 

1  Keats:  "Isabella,  or  the  Pot  of  Basil." 


44        AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

Why  should  they  care  if  political  or  economic  problems 
threaten  to  undo  the  land?  They  take  no  interest  in  the 
annual  elections,  do  not  care  about  issues  or  candidates, 
and  do  not  even  take  the  trouble  to  register  or  to  vote. 
"They  are  not  grieved  for  the  affliction  of  Joseph."  It 
is  no  wonder  that  the  poverty-stricken  do  not  care.  They 
cannot.  Why  should  they?  But  what  of  those  whose 
wealth  and  position  permit  untold  helpfulness  and  noble 
service?  That  these  are  not  "grieved"  for  their  country's 
welfare  is  quite  as  serious  a  situation  as  that  they  should 
waste  their  substance  in  riotous  living. 

There  was  One,  long  after  Amos,  whom  the  world  some- 
times thinks  of  as  "a  Man  of  sorrows,  and  acquainted  with 
grief."  His  grieving  was  not  for  himself  but  for  his  breth- 
ren. He  saw  and  felt  the  bitterness  of  their  lot.  He 
marked  out  the  only  path  along  which  men  may  expect  to 
find  a  common  welfare.  His  Spirit  alone  can  suffice  to 
awaken  and  to  direct  those  whose  care  for  themselves  and 
for  their  country  will  be  noble  and  worthy,  because  it  is 
"rooted  and  fixed  in  God." 

There  is  no  denying  that  such  passages  as  those  in- 
cluded in  the  present  lesson  are  almost  bitter  in  their  un- 
compromising severity.  The  prophet  makes  no  concessions 
to  expediency.  He  uses  the  harshest  terms  to  describe  those 
whom  he  denounces.  He  is  well  aware  that  they  are  the 
elite  of  the  land,  that  they  are  rich,  powerful,  and  "repre- 
sentative." He  knew  that  he  would  incur  their  ridicule, 
their  scorn,  and,  finally,  their  wrath;  but  none  of  these 
things  moved  him.  In  other  words,  he  had  all  the  marks 
of  men  whom  some  to-day  call  radicals.  And  if  this  is 
clear  at  this  late  day,  it  was  tenfold  more  obvious  at  the 
time. 

The  recognition  of  this  fact  is  of  considerable  importance 
in  the  understanding  of  the  Bible.  It  means  that  there  are 
forms  of  radicalism — radicalism  that  challenges  the  social 
order — which  have  a  rightful  place  in  God's  scheme  of 
revelation.  The  divine  messengers  are  sometimes  storms 
and  lightnings  (Psa.  104.  4)  and  sometimes  stormy,  fiery 
prophets  whose  words  smite  and  slay  (Hos.  6.  5).  God 
has  seen  fit  to  raise  up  and  to  bless  these  men,  with  all 


THE   DECEITFULNESS   OF  EICHES         45 

their  vehemence.  Radicals  in  thought  and  in  word,  they 
are  no  less  men  of  God.  They  go  to  extremes.  They  set 
forth  ideas  that  later  prophets,  as  radical  as  themselves, 
do  not  hesitate  to  modify  and  even  to  contradict.  Indeed, 
in  nearly  every  instance  the  Biblical  prophets  were  men  of 
this  character,  and  it  is  this  kind  of  men  who  have  most 
signally  advanced  the  cause  of  God  and  have  enlarged  the 
scope  of  the  divine  revelation. 

They  are  not  comfortable  men  to  live  with,  but  they 
themselves  neither  seek  nor  offer  comfort.  They  call  to 
others  to  take  up  the  message  they  proclaim,  not  because 
they  wish  to  be  radical  for  the  mere  sake  of  being  radical, 
not  because  they  wish  to  involve  society  in  turmoil  and 
revolution,  but  because,  in  view  of  the  conditions  they 
see  about  them,  they  feel  that  nothing  can  be  done  but  to 
strike  at  once  to  the  heart  of  the  matter;  and  they  lay  the 
ax  at  the  root  of  the  tree  (Luke  3.  9).  He  who  would 
follow  the  prophets  must  bid  farewell  to  ease  and  comfort. 
The  vigor  and  rigor  of  this  small  but  mighty  company 
make  them  seem  stem  and  forbidding.  But  they  are  the 
ones  who  prepare  the  way  for  Him  of  whom  it  is  said  "he 
spake,  and  it  was  done ;  he  commanded,  and  it  stood  fast" 
(Psa.  33.  9). 

Questions  to  Discuss 

What  weakness  in  our  Nation  can  be  traced  to  the  luxury 
and  power  made  possible  by  great  wealth? 

What  opportunity  have  the  rich  and  strong  really  to 
know  how  th^  poor  and  weak  have  to  live? 

Would  Amos  have  had  anything  to  say  on  the  question 
of  women  in  politics? 

Can  expensive  houses,  clothes,  and  entertainments  be 
justified  on  the  ground  that  they  keep  money  in  circula- 
tion and  give  employment  to  men  and  women? 

Would  you  call  Amos  a  "radical"? 


CHAPTER  YI 

THE  PROPHET  AND  THE  BUSINESS  MAN 
Amos  5,  7-12;  8.  4-7 

A  Prophet's  Sketchbook 

One  of  the  surprises  that  come  over  and  over  again  to 
the  careful  Bible  student,  and  especially  to  the  student  of 
the  prophets,  is  the  strangely  modern  character  of  many 
of  the  subjects  with  which  the  prophets  dealt.  After  due 
allowance  is  made  for  differences  of  time,  language,  cus- 
toms, and  the  rest,  there  remain  passages  so  strikingly  ap- 
propriate to  our  own  situations  that  they  might  have  been 
written  yesterday  instead  of  twenty-five  hundred  years  ago. 

A  good  illustration  of  this  fact  appears  in  the  present 
lesson.  Amos  has  here  sketched  the  business  man  of  the 
ancient  Hebrew  world — his  methods,  his  customers,  and 
his  "pull''  with  the  courts.  The  picture  is  true  not  only 
for  its  own  time,  but  it  will  be  true  as  long  as  the  traffic 
of  the  world  is  carried  on  for  the  enrichment  of  the  few 
rather  than  for  the  service  of  all.  It  is  true  that  the  amaz- 
ing developments  of  modern  business  far  surpass  anything 
of  the  kind  the  ancient  world  produced,  but  certain  traits 
reappear  in  all  periods  of  commercial  history,  and  the  man 
sketched  here  is  true  to  type. 

Note  that  Amos  has  given  us  a  remarkable  number  and 
variety  of  these  pen  portraits.  His  book  constitutes  a  kind 
of  portrait  gallery,  in  which  one  may  find  nearly  all  the 
typical  characters  of  that  day.  At  first  one  does  not  realize 
how  clear  and  numerous  these  are.  They  are  done  so  con- 
cisely, and  most  of  our  Bible  reading  is  done  so  rapidly, 
that  only  after  persistent  attention  does  one  begin  to  get 
the  vivid  portrayals  of  which  Amos  was  such  a  master. 
Men  and  women,  rich  and  poor,  judge  and  priest,  victor 
and  vanquished,  proud  profiteer  and  impoverished  con- 
sumer, throng  the  pages  of  this  diminutive  tract  we  call 
the  book  of  Amos.    And  they  are  not  huddled  together  in 

46 


THE  PROPHET  AND  BUSINESS  MAN       47 

an  indistinguishable  mass ;  each  is  as  clear-cut  as  a  cameo 
and  so  convincingly  outlined  that  one  feels  instinctively 
that  they  are  absolutely  true  to  life. 

Here  is  our  business  man,  as  Amos  sees  him,  in  all  his 
characteristic  zeal  for  the  slogan  "Business  is  business." 
He  is  against  those  foolish  religious  customs  that  interfere 
with  trade.  "New  moon  and  sabbath" — sacred  days  in 
which  business  gave  way.  to  religion — were  only  irksome 
to  him.  He  had  no  sympathy  with  such  a  religion  and  he 
hated  to  have  the  stream  of  trade  interrupted  (8.  5).  When 
we  think  of  what  has  been  happening  in  the  wheat  and 
flour  market  during  the  last  couple  of  years,  it  is  interest- 
ing to  see  that  similar  questions  were  rife  in  Amos'  day. 
Here  are  wheat  merchants  profiteering  (as  we  might  say) 
by  charging  high  prices  for  short  weights  and  for  an  in- 
ferior article.  Apparently  they  "got  by"  with  this  sort  of 
thing  without  serious  interference. 

Bad  Motives  in  Business 

It  must  be  admitted  that  irregularities  of  this  kind  are 
still  matters  of  course  in  the  Orient,  and  exactness  in  that 
day  was  hardly  to  be  looked  for  when  weights,  measures, 
and  money  lacked  the  definite  standards  established  by 
modem  scientific  methods.    George  A.  Barton  writes : 

A  glance  at  the  weights  here  described  makes  it  evident  that 
the  standards  of  the  ancient  Hebrews  were  not  exact.  If 
these  are  representative  weights,  the  shekel  must  have  varied 
from  two  hundred  to  more  than  three  hundred  grains  troy. 
This  is  what  one  acquainted  with  the  Palestine  of  to-day  would 
expect.  The  peasants  still  use  field  stones  as  weights,  selecting 
one  that  is  approximately  of  the  weight  they  desire.  Even 
among  the  merchants  of  modern  Jerusalem,  where  one  would 
expect  more  exact  standards  than  among  the  peasantry,  odd 
scraps  of  old  iron  are  used  for  weights.  .  .  .Indeed,  of  the 
weights  found  at  Gezer,  so  many  were  under  the  average 
standard,  and  so  many  above  it,  that  the  inference  lay  close 
at  hand  that  many  men  had  one  set  of  weights  by  which  to 
purchase  and  another  set  by  which  to  sell." 

A  standard  coinage,  issued  by  a  government,  necessarily 
obviates  the  delay,  the  bother,  and  the  easy  inaccuracy  of 

^ArchcBologv  and  the  Bible^  page  161. 


4B   AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  XEW  OPDER 

weighing  out  a  certain  amount  of  metal  (gold,  silver,  or 
bronze)  whenever  a  payment  had  to  be  made;  but  Amos 
lived  long  before  the  day  of  a  coinage  of  this  kind. 

It  is  all  the  more  significant  that  in  the  face  of  a  certain 
amount  of  inexactness,  which  might  be  natural  and  ex- 
cusable under  the  circumstances,  Amos  denounces  the 
practice  that  is  fraudulent  as  a  matter  of  principle.  Such 
action  is  utterly  foreign  to  the  character  of  God  as  Amos 
understands  him  and  so  must  necessarily  be  foreign  to  any 
man  who  desires  divine  approval.  For  God  cannot  ap- 
prove any  act  or  principle  which  contradicts  his  own 
nature. 

]\Iuch  has  been  said  and  written,  and  vastly  more  will 
be  said  and  written  about  the  iniquities  of  trade  and  the 
possibilities  of  overcoming  or  preventing  them,  but  all  will 
be  vain  until  the  heart  of  the  trader  is  touched  to  new 
motives  and  new  aims.  He  has  sought  profits  at  the  ex- 
pense of  his  fellows,  and  the  world  generally  has  ignored 
the  price  the  people  have  had  to  pay  in  order  to  provide 
these  private  profits.  He  has  valued  his  property  vastly 
more  than  the  persons  of  those  who  developed  and  pro- 
tected it,  and  the  world  has  closed  its  eyes  to  the  folly  of 
permitting  such  a  sacrifice  of  man  upon  the  altar  of  Mam- 
mon. There  are  in  the  Bible  many  denunciations  against 
the  idea  of  human  sacrifice  and  against  those  who  "made 
their  children  to  pass  through  the  fire."  Horrible  as  such 
practices  seem  to  us,  they  were  at  least  done  in  the  supposed 
interest  of  deity  and  as  acts  desired  by  the  gods.  But  what 
can  be  said  and  what  would  some  of  those  old  prophets 
have  said  of  those  who  make  men,  women,  and  children 
pass  through  the  fire  of  our  cotton  mills,  glass  factories, 
and  steel  plants — a  fire  that  burns  out  the  real  life  of  the 
victims  yet  dooms  them  to  a  continued  existence  deadened 
in  every  faculty?  And  this  sacrifice  is  made  not  at  all  in 
the  interest  of  any  deity,  even  the  most  barbarous  and 
primitive,  but  solely  in  the  interest  of  the  selfish  and  self- 
appointed  deities  who  claim  the  products  of  the  sacrifice.^ 

1  If  this  statement  seems  unduly  severe,  let  it  be  recalled  that  in  the  fall  of  1902, 
during  the  strike  of  the  anthracite  coal  miners  in  Pennbylvania,  Mr.  Baer  of  the 
Reading  Railroad  pubUcly  claimed  that  he  held  the  coal  properties  by  divine  right; 


THE  PEOPHET  AND  BUSINESS  MAN       49 

Poor  Man's  Justice 

Amos  sees  as  clearly  as  any  modern  investigator  that  the 
brunt  of  this  burden  falls  on  the  poor.  They  have  to  pay 
the  prices  asked  or  do  without  their  shoes  or  their  flour 
(8.  6).  If  they  pay  they  must  take  what  they  get  whether 
the  quality  is  what  it  ought  to  be  or  not.  If  it  be  asked 
why  they  do  not  bring  their  cases  to  court,  it  must  be  said 
that  justice  is  the  most  expensive  commodity  on  the  mar- 
ket, and  few,  if  any,  of  the  poor  can  afford  it.  So  far  as  our 
own  courts  are  concerned,  this  is  due  primarily  not  to  any 
reluctance  on  the  part  of  the  court  to  administer  justice 
impartially  to  all,  but  to  the  traditional  machinery  of  the 
law,  which,  in  the  course  of  its  development,  has  resulted 
in  raising  almost  insuperable  obstacles  in  the  path  of  those 
who  most  need  protection.^ 

In  Oriental  countries  justice  is  notoriously  difficult  to 
obtain,  and  Amos  is  both  daring  and  original  in  the  way 
he  strikes  at  a  situation  recognized  by  all  and  opposed  by 
none  but  the  victims,  who  were  usually  helpless  in  the 
matter.  His  denunciation  of  the  way  justice  toward  the 
poor  is  perverted  by  the  bribes  of  the  rich  (5.  7-12)  takes 
its  place  alongside  his  denunciation  of  the  fraudulent  con- 
duct of  business  as  a  scathing  indictment  not  alone  of  his 
own  people  but  of  all  peoples  among  whom  these  evils  are 
found — and  where  are  they  not? 

The  Conscience  of  a  Nation 

It  needs  only  a  moment's  reflection  to  realize  that  this 
indictment  cannot  be  made  until  one  sees  the  facts  of  so- 


and  as  recently  as  December,  1920,  the  Wall  Street  Journal  said:  "When  the  real 
adjustment  comes,  the  unskilled  worker  finishes  where  he  belongs — at  the  bottom 
of  the  list.  He  will  be  able  to  Uve  on  two  dollars  a  day  when  he  is  lucky  enough 
to  get  that  amoimt  regularly.  He  will  thank  goodness  that  he  has  no  family  of 
five  or,  indeed,  anybody  but  himself  to  support;  nor  will  any  employer  pay  him  on 
a  basis  of  any  such  fatherhood."  The  New  York  Christian  Advocate,  from  which 
this  quotation  is  taken,  entitles  its  article  "The  Red  Rag"  and  says,  among  other 
comments,  that,  "to  the  Journal  writer  the  unskilled  laborer  is  no  more  than  a  lump 
of  coal  or  a  ball  of  crude  rubber,  nothing  but  a  necessary  factor  in  production  of 
wealth." 

*  See  Justice  and  the  Poor,   a  report  issued  by  the  Carnegie  Foimdation  and 
carrying  the  indorsement  of  no  less  an  authority  than  Ehhu  Root. 


50        AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

cial  life  with  an  unprejudiced  eye  and  then  is  moved  to 
challenge  them  on  the  basis  of  high  principle.  Amos  saw 
the  facts  and  was  urged  to  speak  by  the  high  principle 
which  refused  to  be  silenced.  Looking  back  upon  his 
position  from  the  vantage  point  of  our  own  later  day,  we 
can  see  without  difficulty  that  in  Amos  the  awakening 
conscience  of  the  Hebrew  people  found  a  voice. 

Amos  himself  was,  of  course,  a  Hebrew.  The  fact  that 
he  belonged  to  a  pitiably  small  minority,  so  far  as  these 
ideas  were  concerned,  made  him  no  less  a  member  of  his 
own  race  and  a  citizen  of  his  own  country.  Time  alone 
could  tell  whether  he  or  those  fellow  citizens  who  opposed 
him  were  on  the  path  of  true  progress  or  most  truly  ex- 
pressed the  characteristic  genius  of  their  people.  And 
time  has  told.  There  is  no  doubt  to-day  that  Amos  repre- 
sented the  best  and  highest  tendencies  of  his  time.  The 
inclusion  of  his  book  in  the  sacred  canon  of  the  Hebrews  is 
proof  enough  that  subsequent  generations  of  his  own  people 
recognized  his  greatness. 

There  is  something  strange,  at  first,  in  the  idea  that  men 
whom  a  nation  honors  as  its  greatest  men  were  in  their  day 
that  nation's  severest  critics.  Yet  that  is  true  of  all  the 
prophets.  No  nation  has  ever  been  more  sternly  or  more 
bitterly  rebuked  than  the  Hebrew  nation  was  by  its  own 
prophets;  but  the  true  life  of  the  Hebrew  spirit  is  seen  in 
the  fact  that,  though  belated,  it  awoke  to  some  sense  of 
where  its  true  greatness  appeared.  This  means  that  the 
nation  came  to  regard  as  part  of  its  most  precious  litera- 
ture, its  sacred  Scriptures,  those  protests  which  revealed  as 
well  as  rebuked  conditions  that  other  nations  accepted  as 
m.atters  of  course — protests  that  challenged  the  accepted 
order  of  social,  political,  and  religious  life.  Indeed,  at 
the  time  they  were  uttered  many  of  the  Hebrews  them- 
selves resented  these  criticisms  and  opposed  the  critic. 
The  resentments  and  oppositions  are  all  but  forgotten; 
the  critic  and  the  criticisms  endure. 

Why  is  this?  Because  those  to  whom  the  Scriptures 
have  come  are  dimly,  blindly  aware  that  somehow  these 
Scriptures  contain  a  divine  wisdom  that  is  able  to  make  a 
nation  wise  unto  salvation — a  wisdom  that  finds  its  work  in 


THE  PROPHET  AND  BUSINESS  MAN       51 

establishing  an  equitable  social  order.  That  divine  wis- 
dom has  been  only  partially  apprehended,  much  still  awaits 
recognition  and  application ;  but  it  is  there  and  it  will  some 
day  appear.  "There  is  nothing  hid  save  that  it  should  be 
manifested.^^ 

God  Speaks  To-Day 

How  shall  this  wisdom  be  brought  to  light?  In  two 
ways:  First,  through  the  awakening  conscience  of  the 
nation  itself  as  embodied  and  made  vocal  in  the  persons  of 
men  and  women  who  are  there  to  meet  just  this  emergency. 
Such  men  look  with  the  clear-seeing  eye  of  an  artist  upon 
the  world  about  them,  they  look  within  their  own  hearts, 
they  look  into  the  Scriptures  and  read  its  imperishable 
words,  they  look  to  God,  the  Father  and  Lover  of  mankind ; 
and  the  rays  that  shine  out  from  all  these  sources  are 
brought  to  a  burning  focus  in  their  hearts.  They  realize 
the  heavenly  joy  that  would  come  to  the  world  if  men 
would  walk  in  this  light.  They  utter  their  denunciations 
of  the  accepted  state  of  affairs.  Their  protests  echo  from 
city  to  city,  arousing  the  same  resentments  and  oppositions 
which  met  such  protests  in  days  of  old.  They  call  for  the 
new  heavens  and  the  new  earth  wherein  dwelleth  right- 
eousness. And  those  who  have  ears  to  hear  know  that 
once  more  the  voice  of  God  is  calling  to  his  people. 

Second,  through  an  awakening  church.  True,  there 
are  those  who  regard  the  church  as  hastening  to  decay,  who 
realize  that  every  institution  tends  to  become  a  lifeless, 
rigid  thing,  unable  to  respond  to  the  needs  of  current  life. 
Yet  in  the  last  few  years  the  church  has  shown  some  sur- 
prising signs  of  vitality.  These  signs  appear  especially  in 
just  the  field  with  which  the  present  lesson  has  been  con- 
cerned— namely,  business.  There  is  not  room  here  to  set 
down  the  official  action  of  the  great  Protestant  denomina- 
tions, the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  and  other  religious 
bodies  that  set  forth  in  terms  appropriate  to  the  present 
time  the  call  of  religion  to  a  reconstruction  of  the  social 
order  according  to  the  principles  which  found  their  earliest 
proclamation  in  the  words  of  Amos.  In  this  call  the 
church  voices  the  awakening  conscience  of  the  community, 


52    AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

speaks  with  a  truly  prophetic  spirit,  and  moves  on  to  that 
leadership  which  is  rightfully  hers  whenever  and  as  long 
as  she  listens  obediently  to  the  voice  of  her  Lord. 

Questions  to  Discuss 

What  do  Amos'  character  sketches  show  of  his  powers 
of  observation? 

Are  there  any  in  your  community  whose  characters 
Amos  would  have  sketched  ?    How  about  yourself  ? 

Are  methods  used  in  business  to-day  which  aid  dis- 
honesty? Is  this  due  to  accident,  ignorance,  or  to  set 
purpose  ? 

Are  the  poor  able  to  pay  as  much  for  legal  advice  as 
large  corporations?  What  bearing  has  this  on  the  admin- 
istration of  justice  to  everybody  impartially? 

Does  religion  encourage  us  to  reveal  and  to  rebuke  such 
conditions  or  to  keep  still  and  not  make  trouble  ? 

What  is  God's  word  to-day  to  the  church  in  the  matter 
of  business  ?    How  is  the  church  responding  to  it  ? 


CHAPTEK  VII 

TEUE  WORSHIP 
Amos  3.  13-15;  4.  4,  5;  4-6,  14,  15,  21  27 

The  Place  Where  Worship  Was  Fashionable 

One  of  the  best-known  incidents  recorded  in  the  book  of 
Genesis  is  the  one  told  of  Jacob,  who  ''lighted  upon  a  cer- 
tain place"  on  the  evening  of  the  fateful  day  of  his  flight 
from  his  brother  Esau  (Gen.  28.  10-19).  This  "certain 
place''  was  none  other  than  the  "Beth-eP'  of  Amos  3.  14. 
Its  fame  went  even  further  back.  It  was  supposed  to  have 
been  the  place  where  Abraham,  having  come  to  a  land 
which  God  would  show  him,  built  an  altar  to  Jehovah 
(Gen.  12.  8). 

As  the  years  passed,  the  town  at  this  place  became  a  city 
of  more  or  less  importance.  But  not  until  after  the  death 
of  Solomon,  when  the  whole  group  of  northern  tribes  (that 
is,  Israel  proper)  threw  off  the  yoke  of  the  Davidic  dynasty, 
did  the  city  reach  its  greatest  glory.  It  then  became  vir- 
tually the  capital  of  the  northern  kingdom— the  city  where 
the  king  dwelt.  Not  the  least  of  its  importance  was  due  to 
its  sacred  history.  There  was  no  shrine  in  the  land  that 
was  more  venerable,  and  when  the  great  altar  was  set  up, 
with  images  of  the  "gods  which  brought  Israel  up  out  of 
Egypt"  (1  Kings  12.  28;  compare  Exod.  32.  4),  it  was 
natural  that  the  people  should  accept  it  as  indeed  the  place 
of  "the  king's  shrine  and  a  royal  temple"  (Amos  7.  13). 
What  Jerusalem  later  became  to  the  Jews,  what  Mecca 
"became  to  the  Mohammedans,  what  Rome  became  to 
Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  Bethel  was  becoming  to  the 
northern  Israelites. 

Here,  one  might  think,  would  be  the  best  kind  of  place 
in  the  world  to  preach  religion;  and  so  it  would — if  the 
religion  preached  was  of  the  kind  the  city  practiced.  But 
Amos,  a  prophet  of  a  new  order  of  tilings,  saw  in  Bethel 

53 


54   AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDEE 

a  symbol  and  center  of  wickedness.  As  Eome  inflamed 
Luther,  so,  two  thousand  years  earlier,  had  Bethel  inflamed 
Amos.  One's  idea  of  God  necessarily  determines  one's 
idea  of  worship;  and  no  one  could  think  of  God  as  Amos 
did  and  suppose  that  the  worship  officially  conducted  in 
Bethel  could  have  divine  approval. 

What  kind  of  worship  did  the  God  of  Amos  desire? 
That  is  the  question  whose  answer,  as  given  by  Amos  him- 
self, has  placed  Amos  in  the  front  rank  of  the  religious 
teachers  of  the  world,  has  revolutionized  our  ideas  of  re- 
ligion, and  has  helped  to  establish  the  unique  place  held  by 
the  Hebrew  people  as  the  bearers  of  a  divine  revelation. 

The  Worship  Amos  Condemned 

Amos'  answer  was  twofold.  In  the  first  place,  he  said, 
Jehovah  did  not  desire  the  kind  of  worship  Bethel  stood 
for.  But  he  did  not  say  it  as  mildly  as  that;  he  said  it 
fiercely  and  in  bitter  scorn.  Could  sarcasm  be  more  biting 
than  ''Come  to  Beth-el,  and  transgress ;  for  this  is  the  sort 
of  thing  you  like"?  The  words  in  4.  4,  5  are  all  in  this 
strain,  and  their  harshness  should  not  be  overlooked.  Amos 
did  not  mince  matters,  did  not  compromise  in  the  slightest 
degree,  made  no  allowance  for  possible  exceptions,  but 
struck  out  from  the  shoulder  to  smite  the  sin  he  saw. 

When  we  read  such  hard  words,  our  first  thought  is 
that  there  must  have  been  something  so  desperately  wicked 
about  the  popular  worship  that  the  people  ought  to  have 
known  better  and  ought  to  have  acted  differently.  When, 
however,  we  notice  the  practices  which  Amos  condemned, 
we  cannot  but  be  amazed  at  the  idea  of  finding  in  just 
these  things  any  ground  for  such  rebukes.  Notice  what  he 
specifies:  sacrifice,  tithes,  thanksgivings,  free-will  offerings 
(4.  4,  5) ;  feast  days,  solemn  assemblies,  music,  both  vocal 
and  instrumental  (5.  21-2?).  These  constitute  the  very 
stuff  of  which  most  religion  (even  yet)  is  made;  and  will 
Amos,  with  one  daring  gesture,  sweep  them  all  away  as 
not  only  useless  but  wicked  ? 

The  ceremonies  and  ritual  that  Amos  saw  at  Bethel — ■ 
that  is,  these  observances  he  rebuked — are  generally  re- 
garded as  having  come  down  from  very  ancient  times,  sane- 


TRUE  WORSHIP  55 

tioned  by  Moses  himself;  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  people  at  large  obeyed  them  in  good  faith  and  in  good 
conscience.  Yet  Amos  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  in  the 
early  days,  when  the  Hebrews  were  in  the  wilderness  under 
the  guidance  of  Moses,  they  did  not  bring  sacrifices  and 
offerings  to  Jehovah. 

If  Amos  was  right  about  this,  we  shall  have  to  revise 
some  of  our  ideas  of  what  actually  occurred  during  those 
years  in  the  wilderness — a  subject  that  would  carry  us 
far  beyond  the  proper  limits  of  the  lesson  before  us.  It 
may  be  said  in  passing,  however,  that  this  word  in  Amos 
tends  to  confirm  the  view  of  recent  scholars  that  much  of 
the  elaborate  system  of  worship  observed  later  among  the 
Hebrews  grew  up  during  the  centuries  following  Moses. 
However  that  may  be,  it  is  clear  that  Amos  had  no  regard 
for  them,  and  that  there  was  nothing  in  their  past  history, 
as  there  was  nothing  in  their  current  practice,  to  prevent 
him  from  denouncing  them  in  the  name  of  the  Lord. 

Perhaps  the  radical  character  of  Amos'  position  will 
stand  out  more  clearly  if  it  is  recognized  that  he  includes 
in  his  list  acts  that  are  urged  upon  us  to-day  as  necessary 
parts  of  our  own  religion.  Consider  the  whole  matter  of 
tithing  and  of  free-will  offerings,  which  Amos  mentions 
specifically  in  4.  4,  5.  Consider  the  whole  matter  of  church 
attendance,  special  days,  and  special  music,  which  he 
speaks  of  in  5.  21-27.  Are  these  not  exactly  the  things 
that  make  up  a  large  part  of  our  own  church  life?  We 
know  they  are.  They  are  no  different,  either  in  spirit  or 
in  fact,  from  the  acts  upon  which  Amos  pours  out  his 
scorn. 

This  view  of  religion  comes  with  something  of  a  shock 
to  one  who  does  not  realize  what  radicals  the  prophets  were. 
He  begins  to  feel  as  those  first  hearers  of  Amos  felt  when 
it  seemed  to  them  that  Amos  was  pulling  down  about  their 
ears  the  whole  splendid  structure  of  religious  life  and  prac- 
tice, which  at  the  first  had  been  ordained  by  God  himself 
and  had  been  confirmed  by  generations  of  reverent  and 
obedient  observance. 

Yet  it  is  also  clear  that  if  Amos  had  simply  approved  and 
encouraged  the  type  of  religion  he  saw  about  him  at  Bethel, 


5G   AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  OPDER 

we  should  never  have  heard  of  him.  The  men  who  do 
no  more  than  indorse  the  well-established  institutions  of 
their  time  are  not  the  ones  who  make  history,  whether 
they  act  in  the  field  of  politics,  art,  science,  or  religion. 
Progress  always  springs  from  protest.  Advance  means 
change.  No  customs  are  sacred  simply  because  they  are 
ancient.  The  test  of  all  life  (including  the  religious  life) 
is  its  ability  to  survive  the  upheavals  caused  by  new  visions 
of  truth.  It  is  only  by  means  of  such  a  process  that  the 
indestructible  elements  can  be  revealed.  The  "yet  once 
more"  (Heb.  12.  27)  has  perennial  applications;  and  re- 
peatedl)%  in  succeeding  ages,  it  '^signifieth  the  removing  of 
those  things  that  are  shaken,  .  .  .  that  those  things  which 
cannot  be  shaken  may  remain.^' 

The  ■Worship  Amos  Desieed 

Amos,  however,  had  no  satisfaction  in  destruction  for 
its  own  sake.  He  wished  to  pull  down  only  that  he  might 
build  up.  And  the  second  part  of  his  answer  is  positive 
and  constructive.  He  said,  in  effect :  "There  is  a  kind  of 
worship  that  Jehovah  really  desires.  He  really  desires 
that  men  should  'seek  him' — not  his  temple  but  himself — ; 
and  there  are  plain,  straightforward  acts  of  worship  which 
will  be  abundantly  acceptable  to  him."  But  how  different 
these  acts  are  from  those  heretofore  regarded  as  worship- 
ful !  This  new  worship  that  Amos  proclaims  finds  its  ex- 
pression in  hating  evil  and  loving  good,  in  seeing  not  only 
that  justice  is  administered  in  the  place  of  justice  ("the 
gate"),  but  that  it  overflows  the  land  like  a  flood  (5.  14, 
15,  24). 

There  had  come  into  the  heart  of  Amos  a  revelation 
of  that  tremendous  principle  that  a  city's  religion  is  not 
to  be  measured  by  its  churches  and  cathedrals,  its  churchly 
ceremonies,  offerings,  and  solemn  assemblies  (and  how 
solemn  they  are!),  but  bv  its  treatment  of  the  "righteous," 
the  "just,"  and  the  "poor"  in  their  citizen  life  (2.  6,  7; 
5.  12;  8.  4-6).  He  does  not  ask  for  mercy  nor  for  charit}', 
but  for  justice.  In  our  separation  of  church  and  state  we 
have  assigned  worship  to  the  church  and  justice  to  the 


TRUE  WORSHIP  57 

state.  The  position  of  Amos  is  that  the  exercise  of  justice 
fe  the  kind  of  worship  God  desires. 

What  Amos  means  is  just  this:  Acceptable  worship 
must  be  what  God  likes  (compare  "this  is  what  you  like  to 
do/'  4.  5),  and  God  likes  justice  between  man  and  man; 
especially  does  he  like  the  poor  and  the  weak  to  receive 
justice  at  the  hands  of  the  rich  and  the  strong.  And  that 
means,  stated  even  more  generally,  that  Amos  finds  the 
religious  center  of  gravity  in  man's  behavior  to  his  fellow 
men.  He  probably  would  say  that  man's  attitude  toward 
man  is  his  attitude  toward  God.  The  attitude  toward  man 
is  not  a  by-product,  a  side  issue,  an  accessory,  of  one's  at- 
titude toward  God;  it  is  that  attitude.  The  field  of  true 
worship,  as  Amos  presents  it,  is  thus  entirely  shifted  from 
ceremony  to  service,  from  ritual  to  righteousness,  from  the 
mysterious  to  the  matter-of-fact,  from  the  priestly  to  the 
practical. 

There  is  no  denying  the  fact  that  if  Amos  was  right,  it 
was  necessary  to  make  a  wholesale  revision  of  the  re- 
ligious ideas  of  his  day;  and  in  so  far  as  those  ideas  are 
current  in  our  own  day,  the  same  wholesale  revision  is 
necessary  if  we  are  to  accept  Amos'  point  of  view.  He  held 
that  the  essential  field  of  religion,  of  true  worship,  was 
not  in  a  church  building,  but  in  the  place  of  daily  business, 
not  in  the  celebration  of  special  days,  but  in  the  humanizing 
of  ^Veek"  days,  not  the  church  use  of  money,  but  the  com- 
mercial use  of  money,  not  in  private  advantage  but  in 
public  justice. 

It  has  long  been  the  custom  among  us  to  regard  business, 
week-days,  commerce,  and  the  courts  as  secular  instead  of 
sacred.  This  is  where  Amos  completely  shifts  the  empha- 
sis. These  are  sacred.  In  them  men  are  to  worship.  The 
acts  and  days  and  places  that  custom  has  so  long  called 
sacred  Amos  will  have  nothing  to  do  with;  but  in  the  com- 
mon life,  day  by  day  and  man  to  man,  he  demands,  with 
an  insistence  that  the  centuries  cannot  silence,  that  men 
shall  exercise  the  basic  principles  of  humanity  and  justice 
as  the  pure  expression  of  the  worship  God  desires.  To 
seek  these  is  to  seek  God.  To  know  these  as  the  founda- 
tions of  all  righteous  living  is  to  know  God  as  he  is.    Until 


58   AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDER 

we  are  ready  to  address  ourselves  to  a  thoroughgoing  ap- 
plication of  this  rule  of  Amos  in  our  church  and  com- 
munity life,  it  will  be  idle  to  discuss  the  possibility  of 
applying  the  Golden  Eule.  The  rule  of  Amos  precedes  the 
rule'^of  Christ. 

Amos  Spoke  With  a  Poet's  Passion 

The  prevailing  tone,  which  sounds  through  nearly  all  the 
words  of  Amos,  is  so  stern  and  so  forbidding  that  it  is  of 
special  importance  not  to  let  his  denunciations  hide  his 
demands.  He  has  this  positive  message  that,  if  men  would 
accept  and  practice,  undoubtedly  carries  within  the  seed 
of  all  the  highest  developments  of  a  nation's  life;  and  his 
interpretation  of  true  religion  in  terms  of  common  life  is 
what  gives  him  his  undying  fame. 

It  may  be  asked  whether  he  was  quite  as  severe  as  the 
words  of  his  book  would  indicate.  Did  he  really  mean  that 
ceremonial  worship  was  wicked  ?  Did  he  mean  that  special 
times  and  seasons,  special  acts  and  offerings,  were  really 
odious  in  the  sight  of  God?  Or  would  he  have  said  that 
these  were  all  right  provided  the  other  things — humanity 
and  justice — prevailed  throughout  the  daily  life?  Would 
he  have  said  that  if  humanity  and  justice  were  made  su- 
preme and  dominant,  the  temple  and  its  ritual  would  have 
been  harmless? 

Unfortunately,  we  cannot  answer  these  questions.  We 
have  nothing  but  his  book  upon  which  to  base  an  answer; 
and  the  position  taken  in  his  book  is  the  one  set  forth 
above.  It  is  a  familiar  fact,  however,  that  when  a  great 
soul  has  been  set  on  fire  by  a  new  and  overwhelming  reve- 
lation of  truth  and  duty  he  is  not  likely  to  stop  in  the  ut- 
terance of  his  great  message  to  discuss  pros  and  cons  and 
to  weigh  modifications  and  exceptions.  The  prophet,  like 
the  poet,  "mad  with  heavenly  fire,  flings  men  his  song 
white-hot."  It  would  be  as  useless,  as  it  would  be  imper- 
tinent, to  raise  questions  of  application  and  consistency. 
The  prophets  proclaim  the  mighty  principles  that,  divinely 
revealed,  divinely  direct  the  lives  of  men  toward  divine 
goals.  We  lesser  souls,  who  cannot  reach  so  high,  nor  see 
so  far,  can  deal  with  ways  and  means  by  which  the  great 


TEUE  WORSHIP  59 

principles  become  personal  possessions.    And  this  we  will 
do  if  only  the  spirit  of  the  prophets  kindles  ours ! 

Questions  to  Discuss 

What  would  Amos  have  thought  of  the  Christmas  and 
Easter  programs  in  our  churches  and  Sunday  schools? 

What  religious  acts  referred  to  by  Amos  appear  in 
present-day  religion? 

Does  he  speak  of  them  with  approval  or  disapproval? 
Why? 

Would  he  be  regarded  as  a  heretic  to-day  ?    By  whom  ? 

Is  his  idea  of  true  worship  easier  or  harder  to  carry  out 
than  the  customary  '^church  activities"?     Why? 

How  and  in  what  degree  can  our  churches  be  inspired 
by  the  spirit  of  the  prophets?    Whose  spirit  was  that? 


CHAPTER  VIII 

AEE  NATIONAL  DISASTERS  DIVINE 
PUNISHMENTS? 

Amos  3.  3-6;  4.  6-13;  5.  1,  12,  18-20 

Amos'  New  Doctrine 

One  of  the  differences  between  Amos  and  the  prophets 
who  went  before  him  is  found  in  the  way  he  speaks  of  the 
political  welfare  of  the  nation.  The  earlier  prophets  were 
devoted  to  the  political  defense  and  advancement  of  the 
national  prosperity.  They  usually  appeared  when  the  na- 
tion was  threatened  by  a  foreign  foe  and,  in  the  name  of 
Jehovah,  roused  the  people  to  patriotic  enthusiasm.  They 
were  intense  nationalists  and  felt  that  Jehovah,  the  God 
of  Israel,  was  bound  to  protect  his  people  and  to  preserve 
the  nation. 

In  Amos  an  entirely  new  type  of  prophet  arose.  These 
prophets  of  the  later  type  "look  not  on  the  outward  ap- 
pearance, but  on  the  heart"  (1  Sam.  16.  7).  They  see 
clearly  the  foreign  foes  that  approach  from  without,  but 
they  are  more  concerned  with  the  moral  and  religious  ene- 
mies within.  They  realize  that  a  nation's  most  serious 
foes  are  the  social  sins  which  weaken  the  body  politic.  On 
this  account  they  do  not  regard  foreign  foes  solely  as  politi- 
cal dangers;  they  see  in  them  agents  by  whom  God  will 
punish  a  weakened  and  wicked  nation.  This  means  that, 
quite  contrary  to  the  national  feeling  aroused  by  the  earlier 
prophets,  these  later  prophets  can  view  the  downfall  of  the 
nation  not  as  an  ordinary  political  calamity  but  as  a  pun- 
ishment sent  by  Jehovah.  According  to  this  later  view  the 
national  disaster  does  not  mean  Jehovah's  defeat,  as  the 
earlier  prophets  would  have  felt,  but  shows  him  in  his  true 
character  as  a  God  of  righteousness,  who  punishes  a  wicked 
nation  even  though  it  be  his  own. 

60 


NATIONAL  DISASTEES  61 

It  is  not  difficult  to  see  that  this  apparent  indifference  of 
the  later  prophets  to  the  nation's  political  security  would 
seem  to  the  people  to  be  irreligious  and  unpatriotic — irre- 
ligious because  it  contradicted  the  orthodox  idea  of  Jeho- 
vah as  the  defender  of  his  people;  unpatriotic  because  it 
persistently  proclaimed  the  downfall  of  the  nation. 

The  passages  which  make  up  the  present  lesson  set 
forth  this  new  and  highly  unwelcome  idea — namely,  that 
the  nation's  position  was  in  no  wise  secure,  that  it  was 
threatened  with  disastrous  invasion,  and  that  Jehovah 
himself  was  bringing  this  disaster  upon  it.  Before  taking 
up  the  message  as  a  whole,  let  us  notice  the  separate  pas- 
sages. 

Who  But  Jehovah  Directs  ^hese  Events? 

A  group  of  comparisons,  such  as  the  Oriental  loves,  lead- 
ing up  to  the  point  and  climax  of  the  whole,  is  given  in 
3.  3-6.  Its  true  character  is  so  obscured  by  the  way  it  is 
ordinarily  printed  that  it  is  worth  reproducing  in  a  more 
appropriate  form : 

"Do  two  walk  together,  except  they  be  agreed? 
Doth  a  lion  roar  in  the  forest  when  he  hath  no  prey? 
Doth  a  young  lion  give  forth  his  voice,  if  he  have  taken 

nothing? 
Doth  a  bird  fall  in  a  snare  upon  the  earth  where  no  snare  Is 

set  for  him? 
Doth  a  snare  spring  up  from  the  ground,  unless  something  is 

to  be  caught? 
Doth   a  trumpet   sound   in   the   city,   without  alarming   the 

people? 
Doth  disaster  come  upon  a  city,  unless  Jehovah  brings  it?" 

This  series  of  seven  questions  (a  significant  number)  is 
intended,  of  course,  in  the  sense  of  direct  statements.  Amos 
has  some  definite  disaster  in  mind,  and  apparently  others, 
too,  realize  that  some  danger  threatened.  But  it  would  not 
have  occurred  to  them  that  Jehovah  should  bring  it.  So, 
much  as  one  to-day  would  build  up  an  argument,  Amos,  in 
true  Oriental  fashion,  heaps  up  illustrative  questions,  all 
of  which  demand  the  answer  he  desires  for  the  last  and 
chief  question  of  all ;  the  conclusion  being :  "No ;  if  disas- 
ter comes  upon  a  city,  Jehovah  brings  iV 


62        AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDEH 

"Prepare  to  ^Ieet  Thy  God'' 

The  next  passage,  4.  6-13,  portrays  a  variety  of  disasters 
that  have  befallen  the  nation  from  time  to  time.  However 
the  Hebrews  had  previously  accounted  for  them,  Amos 
feels  that  their  true  source  had  been  unrecognized,  and 
that  in  reality  they  had  been  sent  by  Jehovah.  And,  in 
part  because  their  source  and  purpose  had  not  been  under- 
stood, these  calamities  had  failed  to  lead  the  people  to  re- 
pentance. 

The  refrain  "Ye  have  not  returned  unto  me"  (verses  6, 
8,  9,  10,  11)  shows  the  passage  to  be  composed  of  stanzas, 
somewhat  similar  to  those  in  1.  3 — 2.  16.  As  in  that  earlier 
passage,  so  here  the  concluding  stanza  differs  strikingly 
from  those  which  precede.  In  the  present  instance  it  is 
hardly  more  than  hinted  at.  Its  beginning  plainly  appears 
in  the  words  "Therefore  thus  will  I  do  unto  thee,  0  Israel" 
(verse  12),  but  with  that  it  abruptly  breaks  off.  What 
follows  gives  no  hint  of  what  the  "thus"  means;  while 
verse  13,  echoed  in  5.  8  and  9.  6,  deals  with  an  entirely 
different  idea. 

Did  the  original  conclusion  correspond  to  2.  14-16  and 
3.  11  ?  It  surely  seems,  after  the  list  of  catastrophes  given 
in  4.  6-11,  that  nothing  remains  but  destruction.  Was 
the  end  so  horrible  that  some  devout  scribe,  copying  for 
his  own  use  the  words  of  the  great  prophet,  felt  that  these 
words  had  better  be  omitted?  Or  did  some  accident  of 
quite  an  ordinary  kind  happen  to  the  early  manuscript, 
blotting  or  tearing  it  so  that  the  lines  which  seem  needed 
here  were  lost?  No  one  can  say.  Perhaps  the  passage  is 
more  terrifying  with  its  conclusion  left  to  the  imagination. 
In  any  case  it  reenforces  the  principle  set  forth  in  3.  3-6 — 
that  Jehovah  is  the  one  from  whom  these  chastenings  come. 

The  idea  back  of  the  words  "Prepare  to  meet  thy  God" 
is  not  wholly  clear.  In  their  present  position  the  words 
evidently  mean  that  the  time  for  repentance  has  passed, 
and  that  nothing  but  the  final  doom  remains.  But  they 
are  ambiguous.  One  can  easily  imagine  circumstances 
under  which  "to  meet  thy  God"  would  mean  joy  and  not 
sorrow,  delight  rather  than  despair.     God  is  not  always 


NATIONAL  DISASTERS  63 

vindictive,  and  even  sinners  may  be  forgiven.  In  any  case 
one  is  not  justified  in  taking  these  words  for  any  dogmatic 
purposes.  Doctrines  are  not  to  be  built  upon  texts  of 
doubtful  meaning. 

On  A  Feast  Day 

The  brief  words  of  5.  1,  2  are  highly  characteristic.  The 
word  here  translated  "lamentation''  means  especially  a 
lament  for  the  dead,  not  simply  a  lament  in  general.  Amos 
personifies  the  nation  under  the  figure  of  the  'Sirgin  of 
Israel"  and  describes  her  as  lying  dead,  forsaken,  unburied. 
He  is  referring  to  the  fate  he  sees  awaiting  the  nation  in 
the  future,  but  he  sees  it  so  clearly  that  it  seems  to  have 
happened  already — the  unburied  corpse  lies  right  there  be- 
fore him. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  know  the  circumstances  under 
which  Amos  made  such  a  pronouncement.  His  book  is 
almost  wholly  silent  on  such  matters.  To  the  collectors 
of  these  words  the  circumstances  and  backgrounds  were  too 
familiar  and,  from  their  point  of  view,  too  unimportant 
for  special  record.  They  were  far  more  interested  in  what 
the  prophet  said  than  in  the  circumstances  under  which 
he  said  it.  These  words,  however,  seem  to  imply  a  certain 
audience,  as  if  Amos  had  uttered  them  on  some  public 
occasion  when  he  could  count  on  having  a  crowd  to  hear 
him.  It  might  have  been,  as  some  have  supposed,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  harvest  festival,  when  many  would  have 
come  to  "rejoice  before  Jehovah.''  Such  times  were  times 
of  relaxation  and  recreation,  times  of  feasting  and  singing. 
One  can  imagine  how  someone  would  stir  a  group  of  feast- 
ers  by  reciting  such  words  as : 

"God  give  thee  of  the  dew  of  heaven, 
And  the  fatness  of  the  earth, 
And  plenty  of  corn  and  wine: 
Let  peoples  serve  thee, 
And  nations  bow  down  to  thee"  (Gen.  27.  28,  29). 

To  this  all  would  respond  with  "Amen"  and  "The  Lord 
hath  fulfilled  his  word.  Hallelujah !"  Suddenly  a  sound 
is  heard  which  all  know  only  too  well.    It  is  the  wailing 


64    AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

for  the  dead.  It  comes  nearer.  And  then,  to  the  amaze- 
ment of  all,  it  proves  to  be  no  funeral  procession — only  this 
grim  prophet.  His  piercing  eyes  take  them  all  in.  What 
is  he  saying? 

"The   virgin  of  Israel   is   fallen — 
She  shall  no  more  rise: 
She  is  forsaken  upon  her  land — 
There  is  none  to  raise  her"  (Amos  5.  2). 

What  in  the  world  does  he  mean?  Then,  as  he  sees  the 
eyes  of  all  fixed  upon  him,  he  continues  with  terrible  earn- 
estness : 

"Hear  this  word  which  I  take  up  against  you,  even  a  death- 
chant,  O  house  of  Israel: 
Woe  unto  you  that  desire  the  day  of  the  Lord! 
What  is  the  day  of  the  Lord  to  you? 
It  is  darkness  and  not  light.  .  .  . 
Even  very  dark,  and  no  brightness  in  it"  (5.  1,  18,  20). 

But  he  cannot  hold  them  long.  There  is  too  much 
festivity  in  the  air.  Such  an  idea  is  ridiculous !  Who  can 
imagine  disaster  in  the  face  of  all  this  prosperity?  And 
then  someone  says,  just  loud  enough  for  a  few  to  hear, 
"He's  crazy,''  and  the  spell  is  broken !  They  begin  to 
laugh,  they  call  him  names,  they  tell  him  to  go  back  where* 
he  came  from, — and  then  turn  again  to  their  feasting. . 

If  this  did  not  all  happen  in  just  this  way,  it  is  never- 
theless well  within  the  bounds  of  possibility;  and  in  prin- 
ciple this  is  what  has  happened  over  and  over  again  when 
a  careless,  self-satisfied  people  has  been  confronted  by  an 
Amos,  a  Paul,  a  Savonarola,  a  John  Wesley. 

A  Difficult  Question 

The  particular  message  which  appears  in  the  passages 
grouped  together  for  the  lesson  is  one  that  reaches  down 
deep  into  the  very  heart  of  faith.  It  seems  almost  a  matter 
of  instinct  to  regard  a  general  catastrophe  as  an  act  of  God. 
If  we  are  caught  in  it,  we  call  on  God  to  save  us.  If  it  hap- 
pens to  others,  we  ask  why  God  did  it.  It  makes  little 
difference  what  kind  of  disaster  occurs;  the  first  feeling 


NATIONAL  DISASTEKS  65 

is  the  same.  This  is  the  feeling  that  underlies  these  words 
of  Amos  and  that  is,  in  a  way,  developed  in  the  lesson. 

He  first  states  the  general  fact  that  when  evil  befalls  a 
city,  it  is  Jehovah's  doing.  Then  he  takes  up  in  more  detail 
certain  evils  that  have  actually  happened — famine,  drought, 
blasting  and  mildew,  pestilence,  defeat  in  war.  Although 
we  should  regard  some  of  these  as  natural  events,  Amos 
groups  them  all  together  as  the  voice  of  God  calling  the 
nation  to  repentance.  Finally,  in  what  he  regards  as  the 
approaching  death  of  the  nation,  brought  to  pass  by  enemy 
invasion,  he  sees  only  the  act  of  God. 

As  we  read  these  statements,  they  are  so  earnest  and  so 
clear  that  we  cannot  help  saying  to  ourselves,  "Of  course; 
that  is  just  the  way  it  all  happened,  and  exactly  what  it  all 
meant."  One  can  be  deeply  religious,  however,  and  still 
have  the  question  arise  in  his  mind  whether  it  was  all  as 
simple  as  these  brief  statements  make  it  seem.  We  do  not 
doubt  that  God  was  back  of  these  events,  as  he  is  hack  of 
all  events;  but  the  meaning  of  these  events,  the  purposes 
they  were  meant  to  serve,  the  divine  motive  that  led  to 
them,  the  idea  that  they  were  punishments — these  are 
questions  not  to  be  answered  so  easily. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  Amos  was  not  the  only 
one  of  the  sacred  writers  who  dealt  with  this  subject,  and 
that  Amos'  view — namely,  that  disasters  such  as  he  de- 
scribed were  national  punishments — is  not  the  only  view 
represented  in  the  Bible.  In  the  Old  Testament  the  whole 
great  book  of  Job  shows  that  calamities  befall  the  right- 
eous; in  which  case,  naturally,  they  cannot  be  regarded  as 
punishments.  In  the  New  Testament  Jesus  tells  in  words 
of  undying  beauty  of  the  heavenly  Father  who  "maketh 
his  sun  to  rise  on  the  evil  and  on  the  good,  and  sendeth 
rain  on  the  just  and  the  unjust"  (Matt.  5.  45).  He 
also,  in  one  place,  tells  that  such  tragedies  as  being  slain  by 
Pilate  or  losing  one's  life  because  caught  under  a  falling 
tower  are  not  signs  of  any  special  sinfulness  on  the  part  of 
the  victims  (Luke  13.  1-5).  While  this  does  not  neces- 
sarily mean  that  events  of  this  kind  are  never  punishments, 
it  clearly  shows  that  one  cannot  always  be  sure  whether  a 
certain  disaster  should  be  regarded  as  a  punishment  or  not. 


66        AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

The  fact  of  God's  blessings  is  only  another  side  of  the 
same  question.  Few  would  be  so  bold  as  to  say  that  they 
have  personally  deserved  all  the  joys  and  comforts  of  life 
that  have  come  to  them.  And  if  one's  welfare  cannot 
always  be  regarded  as  a  reward  of  merit,  neither  can  one's 
ill-fare  always  be  regarded  as  a  punishment  of  demerit. 

It  would  seem,  then,  that  one  should  not  be  too  hasty  in 
his  conclusions  regarding  subjects  upon  which  the  Bible 
writers  themselves  hold  different  ideas.  When  taken  in 
their  proper  order  and  considered  in  their  proper  relation 
to  each  other,  it  is  seen  that  these  different  writers  form 
a  company  of  men  through  whom  the  divine  revelation 
came  as  they  were  able  to  receive  it.  Each  in  turn  had  a 
vision  of  some  aspect  of  the  truth,  true  as  far  as  it  went, 
but  not  complete ;  and  each  in  turn  built  upon  the  founda- 
tion laid  by  those  who  went  before.  Indeed,  he  not  only 
built  upon  that  foundation,  but  sometimes  modified  or  re- 
modeled the  foundation  itself.  He  advanced  man's  knowl- 
edge in  some  one  direction,  adding  his  own  contribution 
to  the  sum  of  the  whole.  Aspects  of  the  subject  which  he 
did  not  develop  were  taken  up  later  by  those  who  followed 
him,  or  they  still  await  development. 

Truth  Still  to  Be  Revealed 

To  say  that  some  of  these  subjects  await  development  is 
saying  that  revelation  concerning  them  is  still  to  come; 
and  this  is  in  harmony  with  John  16.  12,  13,  where  it  is 
plainly  indicated  that  the  followers  of  Jesus,  then  and 
thereafter,  were  the  ones  through  whom  later  truth  was  to 
be  received.  This  gives  us  our  own  true  place  in  the  great 
stream  of  religious  life,  of  which  the  prophets,  the  apos- 
tles, and  the  church  of  later  ages  all  form  a  vital  part.  It 
is  not  to  be  expected  that  every  individual  member  of  the 
church  should  become  the  channel  of  the  fullest  possible 
revelation.  That  is  no  more  true  to-day  than  it  was  in  the 
days  of  Amos,  of  Paul,  of  Augustine,  or  of  Luther.  But 
it  means  that  the  God  of  truth  still  lives,  that  his  children 
still  need  him,  and^that  he  is  still  leading  them  into  ever- 
richer  apprehensions  of  his  love. 

It  is  in  this  light  that  these  words  of  Amos  and,  indeed, 


NATIONAL  DISASTERS  '  67 

Amos  himself,  are  to  be  understood.  He  was  one  of  that 
splendid  company  of  prophets  through  whom  "God,  .  .  . 
at  sundry  times  and  in  divers  manners  spake  in  time  past 
unto  the  fathers^'  (Heb.  1.  1),  He  appeared  at  a  time 
when  it  was  necessary  to  shake  the  national  spirit  out  of 
its  religious  complacency  and  to  rouse  the  people  to  new 
thoughts  of  God  and  new  standards  of  life.  He  realized 
that  the  supreme  need  of  the  hour  was  to  make  the  people 
see  that  their  reliance  on  God  would  be  in  vain  unless  they 
met  the  obligations  he  laid  on  them.  These  divine  obli- 
gations dealt  with  life  in  a  much  deeper  way  than  the 
people  had  hitherto  understood.  Failure  to  meet  them 
meant  disaster.  With  a  foreign  foe  on  the  horizon  Amos 
felt  that  the  disaster  was  at  hand,  and  so  his  message  was 
definite  and  imperative. 

Looking  back  over  the  story,  two  impressive  results  ap- 
pear. One  is  that  thirty-five  or  forty  years  after  Amos 
the  whole  northern  kingdom  actually  fell  a  prey  to  the 
great  empire  of  Assyria  (b.  c.  722).  The  other  is  that  the 
lesson  taught  in  these  words  of  Amos — namely,  that  no 
nation  can  survive  or  expect  God  to  preserve  it  which  does 
not  practice,  throughout  the  whole  body  politic,  the  prin- 
ciples of  justice  and  humanity — is  a  lesson  not  yet  learned 
by  the  nations  of  the  earth.  It  has  been  learned  by  small 
groups  of  people  from  time  to  time  and  by  individuals 
here  and  there;  but  never  yet  by  nations  in  a  national 
way.  It  will  only  be  learned  as  men  who  have  found  it 
out  for  themselves  make  it  their  business  to  teach  others. 

Questions  to  Discuss 

How  can  the  hand  of  God  in  history  be  recognized  ? 

How  can  one  be  ready  to  meet  God? 

What  would  Amos  have  said  about  this? 

Does  God  have  equal  control  of  "natural"  events  and  of 
"national"  events  ? 

How  can  the  divine  purposes  be  discovered? 

What  can  we  do  toward  averting  the  disaster  which 
properly  befalls  national  iniquity? 


CHAPTER  IX 

PROPHETIC  VISIONS 

Amos  7.  1-9;  8.  1-3 

What  Did  Amos  See? 

At  first  reading  the  present  lesson  seems  to  take  us  as 
far  as  possible  from  any  sort  of  familiar  experience.  It 
brings  ns  face  to  face  with  some  of  the  experiences  that 
seem  to  put  a  prophet  away  off  in  a  place  by  himself.  Now, 
while  it  is  true  that  these  prophets  were  men  whose  great- 
ness towered  far  above  the  level  of  their  time,  and  while 
it  is  true  that  the  Scriptural  language  often  tends  to  con- 
ceal rather  than  to  reveal  the  true  nature  of  the  experience 
in  question,  many  of  those  experiences  are  quite  clear  and 
convincing.  They  only  need  to  be  restated  in  a  simple  and 
more  modern  form. 

Read  carefully  the  brief  but  striking  passages  that  make 
up  the  lesson.  Note  th^  four  well-defined  ^'visions"  that 
"the  Lord  showed"  Amos — the  grasshoppers,  the  fiery 
drought,  the  plumb-line,  and  the  basket  of  summer  fruit. 
Note  that  these  are  things  that  Amos  had  doubtless  seen 
more  than  once;  the  third  and  fourth,  at  least,  he  must 
have  seen  many  times.  This  helps  us  to  understand  the 
general  sense  of  the  visions  that  Amos  saw.  So  far  as  the 
objects  themselves  were  concerned,  everybody  had  probably 
seen  them  at  one  time  or  another.  What  they  had  not  seen 
was  the  meaning  which  Amos  gives  them;  so  that  what 
Amos  really  "saw"  was  some  meaning  or  message  that  these 
natural  objects  might  serve  to  illustrate.  These  natural 
objects  and  events  might  have  suggested  other  meanings 
to  other  observers,  but  these  are  the  meanings  Amos  saw. 

Note  that  the  first  and  second  visions  are  alike  in  repre- 
senting that  the  disaster  which  they  threatened  was  not 
carried  out.  The  third  and  fourth  represent  the  disaster 
as  carried  to  completion.    So  we  have  two  pairs  of  visions^ 

68 


PEOPHETIC  VISIONS  69 

each  pair  setting  forth  its  own  part  of  the  message.  Note 
that  in  the  first  pair  the  disaster  is  represented  as  sent 
from  God,  with  no  special  reason  stated  as  to  why  it  was 
sent.  In  the  second  pair  the  disaster  comes  as  a  result  of 
some  inner  weakness  or  defect  of  the  people  and  is  a  logical 
result  of  the  conditions  that  they  have  permitted  to  exist. 
Note  also  that  in  the  first  pair  Amos  protests  against  the 
severity  of  the  approaching  disaster.  In  the  second  pair 
he  has  nothing  -to  say  beyond  answering  the  question 
^'What  seest  thou?" 

Note  that  nothing  is  said  as  to  how  "the  Lord  showed" 
Amos  these  things — whether  in  a  dream  of  the  night, 
whether  in  a  trance,  or  whether  in  a  time  of  meditation 
such  as  a  prophet  or  any  serious-minded  person  might  de- 
vote to  serious  things.  As  soon  as  it  is  realized  that  the 
message  is  the  thing,  rather  than  any  special  way  in  which 
it  is  made  known,  it  is  clear  that  such  "visions"  as  are  here 
^.escribed  could  grow  out  of  ideas  that  arose  wholly  wdthin 
the  mind  of  Amos,  and  which  he  puts  in  this  Oriental, 
pictorial  form.  One  need  not  suppose  tliat  Amos  saw  a 
kind  of  moving  picture,  with  appropriate  words  inter- 
spersed. Amos  is  concerned  with  the  will  of  God,  and  as  a 
poet  to-day  might  set  forth  a  noble  thought  in  the  form 
of  some  visible  event  (compare  Lowell's  "The  Vision  of 
Sir  Launfal"),  so  Amos,  himself  a  poet  in  spirit,  sets  forth 
in  the  form  of  "visions"  the  thoughts  and  revelations  that 
have  come  to  him  concerning  himself  and  his  people.  The 
Hebrews  used  the  word  "show"  as  freely  as  we  do,  as,  for 
instance,  in  the  famous  and  searching  words  "He  hath 
showed  thee,  0  man,  what  is  good"  (Mic.  6.  8),  where 
nothing  definite  in  the  way  of  time,  place,  or  manner  is 
involved. 

It  is  important,  further,  to  notice  that  the  whole  of  each 
vision  belongs  to  what  "the  Lord  showed"  Amos ;  including 
what  Amos  hears  himself  saying  and  what  he  hears  the 
Lord  reply.  It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  the 
physical  objects  would  be  more  or  less  familiar,  apart  from 
any  special  message  they  might  suggest;  so  that  what  is 
really  meant  is  that  Amos  found  these  natural  objects  sug- 
gesting or  illustrating  certain  truths  God  had  made  known 


70    AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

to  him.  With  those  truths  in  mind  he  saw  everything  in  a 
new  light.  Everything  spoke  to  him  of  the  message  he 
felt  called  upon  to  proclaim.  His  heart  was  full  of  it,  and 
it  mattered  not  what  he  saw — a  pest  of  grasshoppers,  a 
drought,  a  plumb-line,  or  a  basket  of  summer  fruit — ,  each 
one  offered  some  reminder  or  illustration.  The  vision,  re- 
garded as  something  which  might  be  seen  by  human  eyes, 
is  less  important  than  the  message.  The  message  is  the 
picture;  the  vision  is  only  the  frame. 

In  brief,  these  clear-cut  word  pictures  are  vivid  portray- 
als of  Amos^  own  view  of  his  message  and  of  his  relation 
to  it.  Their  highly  pictorial  character  must  not  divert 
the  attention  from  the  truth  each  was  intended  to  convey. 
The  Oriental  used  then,  as  the  Oriental  uses  to  this  da}^  a 
manner  of  speech  much  more  pictorial  and  fanciful  than 
we  of  the  West  would  dream  of  using.  We  leave  that  kind 
of  thing  to  the  poets,  but  the  Orientals  use  it  in  ordinary 
conversation.  Amos  and  his  people  were  Orientals  and 
had  their  own  manner  of  speech.  It  is  important  for  us 
to  understand  their  manner  as  far  as  we  are  able  in  order 
to  find  beneath  the  surface  of  the  Oriental  language  the 
essential  massage,  the  note  of  reality,  the  heart  and  life, 
which  convince  us  of  our  kinship  with  this  great  soul  of 
a  distant  past. 

The  Message — Part  I 

On  a  first  reading  it  might  seem  that  these  visions,  like 
all  the  words  of  Amos  so  far  considered,  deal  directly  with 
the  people  and  the  future  just  ahead  of  them.  This  is 
true  only  in  part.  More  careful  stu^y  shows  that  what  we 
have  here  is  an  even  more  important  revelation  of  Amos' 
own  thought,  a  leaf  out  of  his  own  spiritual  experience. 
It  is  all  the  more  valuable  because  the  book  has  so  little 
on  this  profoundly  interesting  subject.  In  the  books  of 
Isaiah  and  Jeremiah  accounts  are  given  of  the  so-called 
"call"  of  each,  in  which  the  prophet  definitely  surrenders 
himself  to  the  proclamation  of  whatever  message  God  shall 
send  him.  The  book  of  Amos  has  exactly  one  \eT>.e  on  this 
subject — namely,  7.  15 — ;  and  this  verse  has  generally  been 
regarded  as  the  only  reference  to  Amos'  personal,  inner 


PEOPHETIC  VISIONS  71 

experience.  In  the  verses  that  form  our  lesson,  however, 
while  we  do  not  have  an  account  of  Amos'  call  we  do  have 
an  insight  into  some  of  his  spiritual  experiences  in  relation 
to  his  prophetic  work.  It  is  in  this  light  we  shall  study 
them.  Their  value  in  this  connection  has  been  too  often 
overlooked. 

Let  us  consider  first  the  first  pair  of  visions.  It  was 
shown  above  that  the  words  of  Amos  and  of  the  Lord,  as 
given  in  the  visions,  were  part  of  the  visions.  They  repre- 
sent what  Amos  heard  himself  saying  and  what  he  heard 
the  Lord  reply.  Note  that  in  each  case  (verses  2  and  5) 
the  words  of  Amos  represent  his  approach  to  God,  and  that 
the  words  of  the  Lord  (verses  3  and  6)  represent  the  Lord's 
response  to  this  approach.  It  is  because  they  faithfully 
represent  the  feeling  toward  God  which  Amos  really  had 
and  the  attitude  he  was  sure  God  had  toward  him  that  he 
uses  them  in  the  visions  he  thus  relates.  They  must  have 
represented  the  feelings  of  Amos'  own  heart;  otherwise, 
they  would  never  have  been  repeated  and  preserved.  In- 
teresting as  they  are  for  the  particular  petitions  they  utter, 
they  are  more  interesting  and  more  valuable  as  evidences 
of  Amos'  feeling  of  a  perfectly  free  access  to  God  and  of  his 
conviction  that  God  would  immediately  respond  to  his 
appeals. 

Where  are  we  to  suppose  this  all  took  place?  The  an- 
swer is  right  at  hand.  It  took  place  where  all  such  trans- 
actions take  place — in  the  heart  of  the  seeker  after  God. 
Words  are  not  necessary  in  order  to  have  the  experience, 
although  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Amos  prayed  often 
and  earnestly  for  his  people.  Words  are  necessary  only 
when  we  come  to  describe  the  experience  to  others.  Not 
any  particular  words  that  God  may  use,  but  the  conviction 
in  my  heart  that  he  has  received  me  and  answered  me  is 
the  essential  factor  in  my  experience.  And  as  it  is  with 
the  believer  to-day,  so  it  was  then,  and  so  it  was  with  Amos. 
It  had  been  so  with  Elijah,  who  found  God,  not  in  the 
wind  or  the  earthquake  or  the  fire  but  in  the  still  small 
voice.  So  Amos,  in  these  simple  words,  has  opened  the 
door  of  his  heart,  and  for  a  moment  we  may  see  him  face 
to  fftC0  with  his  Q^d,, 


72        AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

No  idle  curiosity  can  excuse  our  presence  here.  The 
place  is  holy,  and  we  must  come  with  deepest  reverence. 
At  the  moment  when,  as  it  seems  to  Amos,  God  is  about 
to  pour  out  his  punishment  upon  a  rebellious  people,  Amos 
dares  to  reason  with  him  and  dares  to  bid  him  stay  his 
hand.  It  makes  us  think  of  the  parable  Jesus  told  about 
the  gardener  who  pleaded  for  the  barren  fig  tree  (Luke  13. 
6-9).  For  a  moment  Amos  seems  kinder  and  more  for- 
bearing than  God  himself,  and  God  becomes  willing  to  con- 
sent to  Amos'  appeal — at  least,  so  it  seems  to  Amos  at  the 
moment. 

The  boldness  of  Amos  in  this  appeal  was  due  to  his 
understanding  of  his  people,  his  sympathy  with  them,  and 
his  love  for  them.  He  has  often  been  regarded  as  harsh 
and  stern.  And  this  is  true  of  much  that  finds  a  place  in 
his  book.  But  these  two  visions  alone  are  enough  to  show 
that,  however  stern  he  might  be,  he  was  never  unsym- 
pathetic; however  harsh,  he  was  never  bitter.  It  is  his 
love  for  his  people  that  sends  him  to  God  in  this  daring 
fashion.  He  never  would  have  gone  on  his  own  account, 
but  for  his  people  he  does  not  hesitate.  He  knows  them  as 
weak,  erring,  and  insignificant  (^'smalV  verses  2,  5).  He 
knows  that  they  can  never  survive  such  punishments  as 
God  might  visit  upon  them. 

And  the  punishments  are  withheld!  Knowing  the 
people  as  he  does,  Amos  realizes  tliat  they  have  no  idea 
that  punishment  is  at  hand,  and  naturally  there  would  be 
no  one  to  call  upon  God  to  delay  his  visitations.  So  Amos 
somehow  feels  the  burden  of  his  people's  danger  upon  his 
own  shoulders.  He  will  plead  their  cause  even  if  he  be  the 
only  one  to  do  it.  Abraham  asked  God  to  spare  Sodom  in 
case  there  should  be  found  ten  righteous  persons  there 
(Gen.  18.  22-33).  Amos,  who  feels  himself,  like  Elijah 
(1  Kings  19.  14),  the  only  surviving  faithful  one,  dares  to 
ask  that  the  nation  be  spared  even  if  they  are  all  sinners. 
It  was  a  daring  proposal,  and  we  can  almost  imagine  the 
awe  with  which  Amos  made  it  and  the  deeper  awe  that 
came  to  him  as  the  conviction  deepened  in  his  soul  that 
these  disasters  really  liad  been  delayed.  God  had  heard 
him !    But  further  experiences  awaited  him, 


PROPHETIC  VISIONS  73 

The  Message — Paet  II 

The  third  and  fourth  visions  quickly  show  themselves 
as  a  kind  of  second  chapter  to  the  first  pair;  and  as  they 
proceed  to  correct  the  conclusions  Amos  might  have 
reached  on  the  basis  of  the  first  two  visions,  they  also  cor- 
rect the  ideas  which  many  people  to-day  hold  regarding 
the  power  of  a  prophet^s  prayer. 

Note  that  in  these  visions  the  Lord  is  the  first  speaker, 
instead  of  Amos,  as  in  the  first  pair.  Note  that  in  each 
case  the  object  Amos  sees  is  of  a  kind  that  carries  certain 
qualities  and  conclusions  with  it.  Note  that  the  plumb- 
line  gives  a  standard  of  what  might  be  called  "vertical 
truth."  It  cannot  be  diverted  nor  deceived;  it  is  simply 
''there.'^  If  held  alongside  a  wall,  no  word  is  necessary. 
The  wall  is  plumb  or  it  is  not.  In  the  presence  of  the 
plumb-line  it  shows  its  own  approval  or  condemnation. 
Nothing  further  need  be  said.  If  the  Lord  sets  a  certain 
standard  before  the  people,  the  people  meet  that  standard 
or  they  do  not.  When  the  time  has  come  for  the  test,  all 
the  prayers  in  the  world  cannot  change  the  fact. 

The  basket  of  summer  fruit  which  Amos  sees  in  the 
fourth  vision  is  equally  plain  and  convincing.  The  sum- 
mer fruit  has  reached  its  highest  point  of  growth  and  glory, 
and  from  the  moment  it  is  gathered  it  starts  toward  decay. 
This  is  in  the  nature  of  the  case.  Fruit  is  the  sort  of 
thing  that  has  this  quality.  After  it  is  ripened  and  gath- 
ered, all  the  prayers  in  the  world  cannot  delay  the  ap- 
proaching dissolution.  It  has  lived  out  its  day,  its  time  is 
up ;  and  no  matter  how  keen  one's  affection  for  it,  it  cannot 
be  kept  in  its  present  state,  its  end  is  at  hand.  Amos  knew 
all  this  as  well  as  anybody. 

Taking  these  two  visions  together,  they  present  another 
side  of  the  situation  of  which  the  first  visions  showed  but 
one.  Viewed  as  reflections  of  Amos'  spiritual  experience, 
that  experience  is  seen  to  be  somewhat  as  follows:  Amos 
was  a  lover  and  champion  of  his  people.  In  his  devotion 
to  them  he  did  not  hesitate  to  appeal  to  God  himself  in 
their  defense.  As  a  prophet  he  felt  no  restraint  in  the 
divine  presence;  indeed,  he  was  confident,  at  first,  that 


74        AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

not  only  could  he  appeal  to  God,  but  that  his  appeal  must 
be — was — granted.  This  is  not  all,  however :  the  Spirit  of 
God  was  leading  him  to  see  another  factor  in  the  case.  He 
is  shown  that  there  were  qualities  and  conditions  in  the 
people  themselves  which  no  prayer  hut  their  own  could 
change.  No  other  person  praying  for  them,  no  prophet, 
not  even  Amos,  with  all  his  first  assurance,  could  avert 
by  prayer  a  consequence  which  the  nature  of  the  case  com- 
pelled. 

This  is  why,  in  the  second  pair  of  visions,  Amos  has  no 
answer.  He  sees  that  God  is. not  the  only  factor.  The 
people  themselves  make  God's  patience  unavailing.  The 
Lord  shows  him  the  plumb-line  and  the  summer  fruit,  and 
Amos  knows  that  no  appeal  of  his  and  no  willingness  on 
the  Lord's  part  to  hear  and  to  grant  that  appeal  can  give 
straightness  to  the  leaning  wall  or  life  to  the  dying  fruit. 
Amos  was  not  so  much  stern  as  sad.  It  would  sober  any 
man  to  face  such  facts  as  these. 

It  is  one  of  the  tragedies  of  life  that  there  are  limita- 
tions to  the  power  of  love.  There  are  standards  inde- 
pendent of  men  and  (we  say  it  reverently)  of  God.  There 
are  conditions  that  carry  inevitable  results  in  their  train. 
No  matter  how  tenderly  and  devotedly  a  mother  may  love 
her  child,  if  that  child  does  certain  things,  the  mother  is 
simply  helpless.  All  the  love  in  the  world  cannot  avert  the 
consequences.  If,  however,  the  child  himself  attempts 
his  own  amendment,  the  first  step  toward  salvation  has 
been  taken.  The  other  step  is  that  taken  by  the  heavenly 
Father,  who  always  comes  more  than  half  way  to  meet  a 
returning  child. 

This  is  the  great  truth  that  Amos  learned  in  these 
"visions."  He  left  no  stone  unturned  to  arouse  the  people 
to  take  that  first  step,  for  he  realized  now  that  without 
that  step  on  their  own  behalf  no  prayers  of  his  could  save 
them.  He  was  convinced  that  the  divine  standards  of  life 
and  action  must  be  met.  That  is  what  God  stood  for,  and 
that  is  what  Amos  himself  stood  for.  If  the  people  per- 
sisted in  their  failure  to  meet  these  standards,  the  people 
themselves  had  put  their  case  beyond  remedy. 

We  who  live  in  the  later  day  of  the  revelation  of  God's 


PROPHETIC  VISIONS  75 

love  in  Christ  know  that  Christ  himself  acknowledged  the 
same  conditions;  but  we  know  also,  in  the  words  of  the 
great  apostle,  that  while  "the  wages  of  sin  is  death/'  "the 
gift  of  God  is  eternal  Mfe  in  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord" 
(Eom.  6.  23).  But  even  that  gift  is  helpless  until  it  be 
sought  by  the  one  who  needs  it. 

Questions  to  Discuss 

If  these  visions  of  Amos  are  more  concerned  with  ideas 
than  with  physical  objects,  might  not  similar  visions  be 
received  to-day? 

Has  the  second  vision  any  bearing  on  the  question  of 
praying  for  rain? 

Can  prayer  prevail  with  God  unless  the  Spirit  of  God 
prevail  in  the  life  of  the  one  who  prays? 

Was  Amos  any  less  answered  in  the  third  and  fourth 
visions  than  in  the  first  and  second? 

Can  you  think  of  any  means  Amos  failed  to  use  by  which 
the  people  could  have  been  stirred  to  undertake  their  own 
amendment  ? 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  JUDGMENT— ACCORDING  TO  AMOS 

Amos  8.  4-14;  9.  1-10 


The  Day  of  the  Lord 

When  it  was  said  in  a  previous  lesson  that  Amos  was 
the  first  to  proclaim  certain  teachings,  it  was  not  meant 
that  every  word  of  his  book  dealt  with  ideas  never  heard 
before.  There  were  some  beliefs  held  by  the  Hebrews  long 
before  Amos  appeared  which  in  all  probability  Amos  him- 
self shared  at  first  but  which,  in  the  light  of  later  revela- 
tions, Amos  was  compelled  to  correct  or  to  deny.  One  of 
these  concerned  "the  day  of  Jehovah"  (King  James  Ver- 
sion: day  of  the  Lord,  or  more  briefly,  "that  day").  Like 
some  of  the  other  ideas  already  discussed,  this  seems  at 
first  to  be  far  removed  from  modern  ways  of  thinking. 
But  the  principle  underlying  this  term  is  one  of  the  most 
persistent  in  the  whole  field  of  religion,  and  in  some  form 
or  other  it  finds  expression  in  every  age. 

The  several  references  to  this  "day"  in  Amos  indicate 
that  it  was  a  commonplace  of  current  religious  thought. 
It  went  back  to  a  time  earlier  than  any  written  prophecy. 
Indeed,  there  seem  to  be  grounds  for  supposing  that  in 
Egypt,  a  thousand  or  more  years  before  Amos,  there  were 
religious  teachers  who  dealt  with  similar  ideas.^  Coming 
down  to  the  present  time,  we  find  many  forms  of  belief 
which,  in  principle,  are  only  this  ancient  "day  of  the 
Lord''  brought  down  to  date. 

Briefly  stated,  the  idea  of  "the  day"  was  that  Jehovah 
should  deliver  his  people  from  their  enemies  and  thus 
usher  in  a  time  of  happiness,  of  prosperity,  and  of  peace. 
At  different  periods  of  the  nation's  history  the  deliverance 
of  the  people  and  the  overthrow  of  the  enemy  were  differ- 
ently understood.    At  first  it  probably  meant  a  victory  in 

KiJompare  Archoeology  and  the  Bible,  Barton,  Chapter  XXIV. 

76 


JUDGMENT— ACCORDING   TO    AMOS        77 

some  particular  battle.  No  question  was  raised  about  the 
righteousness  of  the  nation's  cause;  it  was  taken  for 
granted  that  Jehovah  and  Israel  were  on  the  same  side, 
and  that  they  belonged  together.  When  Israel  was  threat- 
ened by  an  enemy,  no  one  supposed  that  Jehovah  would 
ask,  "Is  my  nation  righteous  and  does  she  deserve  victory  ?" 

For  this  reason  "the  day"  had  long  been  regarded  as  a 
day  of  triumph.  Indeed,  there  had  been  many  such  "days'' 
when  Israel  had  been  victorious  and  Jehovah  had  been  ex- 
alted. There  could  be  no  better  illustration  of  this  whole 
circle  of  thought  than  Exod.  15.  1-18.  This  stirring  poem 
expresses  admirably  the  point  of  view  of  the  Hebrews  in 
Amos'  day  who  "desired  the  day  of  the  Lord."  The  same 
idea,  in  almost  the  same  words,  appears  to-day  in  our  feel- 
ing that  God  is  on  the  side  of  our  nation  when  any  war  is 
on;  and  that  our  victory  is  a  victory  for  righteousness — 
that  is,  for  God. 

Amos  regards  the  whole  matter  in  a  different  light.  He 
holds  that  God  is  more  concerned  to  have  the  nation  right- 
eous than  to  have  it  victorious.  If  it  is  unrighteous,  it 
shall  be  defeated,  and  it  deserves  to  be.  Perhaps  a  few 
might  escape  (3.  12),  but  the  majority — practically  the 
whole  nation — would  go  down  to  doom.  This  violently 
reversed  the  whole  popular  idea  of  the  day.  It  became  now 
a  day  of  judgment  rather  than  a  day  of  victory. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  Amos  took  such  an  extreme 
view.  His  conception  of  the  righteous  character  of  God 
would  lead  him  to  a  very  dark  view  of  the  unrighteousness 
of  the  nation,  and  his  zeal  for  Jehovah  would  not  make 
him  lenient  toward  sinners.  It  often  happens  that  re- 
vealers  of  new  ideas  run  to  extremes.  It  needs  an  extrem- 
ist to  compel  the  attention  of  an  indifferent  public.  At 
this  distance  it  is  possible  to  look  back  and  see  how  power- 
fully Amos  set  forth  his  unwelcome  message  and  to  see 
also  how  later  prophets  modified  some  of  his  extreme 
positions. 

One  idea  at  least  he  established  in  a  way  never  to  be  for- 
gotten— ^namely,  that  a  day  would  come  when  God  would 
reckon  with  his  people  on  the  basis  of  sin  and  righteous- 
ness.    This  idea  has  gone  through  many  forms  and  has 


78    AMOS,  PKOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

had  an  interesting  history.  We  have  already  seen  that 
Amos  presented  it  in  an  extreme  form.  Isaiah,  who  fol- 
lowed Amos,  reasserted  the  principle  of  judgment  but  held 
that  a  larger  portion  of  the  nation  would  survive  this  judg- 
ment. It  would  still  be  a  small  portion  (remnant),  but 
not  as  small  as  Amos  had  supposed. 

As  the  centuries  passed,  and  changing  conditions  led  to 
new  and  different  thoughts  on  religious  subjects,  the  Jews 
found  themselves  a  very  small  nation,  exploited  and  op- 
pressed by  great  world  empires — Persia,  Greece,  Rome. 
Under  these  influences,  aggravated  by  their  sufferings, 
they  came  more  and  more  to  regard  themselves  as  a  right- 
eous nation  oppressed  by  a  sinful  world.  The  distinctions 
Amos  had  set  up  were  in  large  measure  ignored,  and  the 
nation  thought  of  itself  as  a  whole  once  more  and  as  the 
special  object  of  Jehovah's  uncritical  care. 

The  judgment-day  idea  consequently  took  on  a  new  form 
— namely,  the  overthrow  and  punishment  of  the  great  non- 
Jewish  empires,  which  constituted  practically  the  whole 
political  world  so  far  as  the  Jews  were  concerned,  and  the 
triumph  and  exaltation  of  the  Jewish  nation,  which, 
through  God's  miraculous  act,  would  now  be  raised  to 
glory.  Note  that  the  sin  that  Amos  had  found  in  the  na- 
tion itself  is  now  transferred  to  "the  world''  as  contrasted 
with  the  Jews. 

This  later  form  of  the  idea,  involving  a  relatively  small 
group  of  righteous  persons,  raised  by  divine  intervention 
to  victory  over  a  sinful  world,  had  its  influence  on  the  form 
taken  by  the  later  Christian  idea  of  a  Judgment  Day.  It 
must  be  remembered  that  the  early  Christians  were  Jews 
before  they  were  Christians,  and  that  they  naturally  car- 
ried over  much  of  their  native  Judaism  into  their  newly 
acquired  Christianity.  Before  the  close  of  the  first  century 
they  had  undergone  more  than  one  persecution  that  would 
tend  to  revive  their  earlier  Jewish  ideas  of  a  day  when  God 
would  vindicate  his  little  group  of  faithful  ones  and  punish 
their  oppressors. 

While  we  to-day  can  see  how  these  Jewish  ideas  were  car- 
ried over  into  Christianity,  the  early  Christians  them- 
selves would  not  be  conscious  of  what  they  were  doing. 


JUDGMENT— ACCOEDING   TO    AMOS        79 

Being  Jews,  they  naturally  held  fast  the  hopes  which  col- 
ored so  much  of  the  Jewish  thought  of  that  time.  When 
they  became  Christians,  it  would  not  occur  to  them  that 
they  should  leave  behind  them  some  of  the  most  cheering 
and  encouraging  elements  of  their  Jewish  faith.  So  they 
bring  these  ideas  with  them  and,  so  far  as  this  subject  is 
concerned,  Christianity  becomes  a  kind  of  revised  version 
of  Judaism.  It  is  highly  probable  that  some  of  the  ideas 
about  the  Judgment  held  by  many  Christians  to-day  are 
really  more  Jewish  than  Christian. 

A  detail  that  is  not  without  interest  in  this  connection 
is  the  way  a  significant  word  has  been  used  in  two  mean- 
ings. In  Amos — and  the  Old  Testament  generally — the 
word  "Lord"  is  used  for  Jehovah,  the  God  of  Israel,  and 
"the  day  of  the  Lord"  meant  the  day  of  God,  of  Jehovah. 
In  the  ^ew  Testament  the  word  "Lord"  is  used  of  Christ. 
So  the  early  Christians  could  read  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment references  to  the  day  of  the  Lord  (Jehovah)  and  ap- 
ply them  to  a  day  of  the  Lord  (Christ),  with  which  origi- 
nally they  had  nothing  to  do.  This  coincidence  of  the 
word  aided  the  transfer  of  the  Jewish  ideas  into  the  Chris- 
tian religion. 

The  Earth  Trembled  ' 

In  8.  8,  9  and  9.  5  the  prophet  represents  the  earth  itself 
as  in  some  way  and  in  some  measure  sharing  in  the  judg- 
ment that  is  to  be  visited  on  the  nation.  If  such  references 
occurred  here  only  they  might  be  dismissed  without  se- 
rious consideration;  but  such  expressions  appear  so  fre- 
quently that  they  raise  the  question.  How  did  the  prophets 
think  of  the  world  in  its  relation  to  the  great  messages 
they  had  to  proclaim?  What  is  the  significance  of  such 
statements  as  "the  land  shall  tremble  for  this"  (8.  8)  and 
"I  will  cause  the  sun  to  go  down  at  noon"  (8.  9)  and  "the 
land  shall  melt"  (9.  5)  ?  In  the  first  place  it  is  quite 
clear  that  Amos  is  not  thinking  of  what  people  to-day 
mean  by  the  end  of  the  world.  He  is  referring  to  the  pun- 
ishments that  shall  come  upon  the  people  and  he  evidently 
regards  these  punishments  as  near  at  hand. 

The  prophets^  as  a  rule,  do  not  seem  to  anticipate  a  de- 


80        AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDEB 

struction  of  the  world.  They  expect  punishments  that 
they  describe  in  terms  of  natural  events,  but  the  blessed 
time  that  was  expected  to  follow  these  punishments  was 
always  regarded  as  taking  place  upon  the  earth.  In  order 
to  be  a  suitable  place  for  the  purified  nation  which  sur- 
vived the  punishments,  the  earth  itself  was  renovated  and 
renewed.  It  is  in  this  sense  that  we  read  of  "new 
heavens  and  a  new  earth"  (Isa.  65.  17),  in  which  the  same 
natural  conditions  appear  which  belong  to  the  present 
earth. 

Similar  expressions  are  used  for  less  extensive  events, 
as  in  Amos  1.  2.  Often  heaven  and  earth  are  called  upon 
as  though  they  might  act  as  witnesses  of  the  charges 
brought  against  a  rebellious  people,  as  in  Isa.  1.  2.  Winds 
and  lightnings  act  as  messengers  for  divine  errands  (Psa. 
104.  3,  4).  It  is  thus  evident  that  references  to  nature 
such  as  are  found  in  the  present  lesson  are  not  to  be 
separated  from  these  other  ones,  which  are  of  a  milder 
character.  They  all  belong  together  and  are  parts  of  that 
view  of  nature  characteristic  of  the  Hebrews  generally 
and  of  the  prophets  in  particular. 

The  Hebrews  generally  shared  with  the  rest  of  the  world 
at  that  time  an  idea  of  nature  very  different  from  that  held 
to-day.  When  it  is  considered  how  recently  men  have 
learned  about  gravitation,  the  shape  of  the  earth,  eclipses, 
earthquakes,  light,  and  electricity,  it  is  no  wonder  that  in 
ancient  times  men  ignorant  of  these  things  regarded  the 
earth  as  almost  a  living  thing,  whose  actions  were  directed 
not  by  certain  "^'natural  laws"  but  by  feelings  of  the  earth 
itself,  as  it  responded  to  acts  of  God,  of  man,  or  of  spirits 
(compare  Isa.  1.  2;  Jer.  2.  13;  Isa.  49.  1;  Psa.  65.  11-13; 
77.  16;  96.  11;  98.  8).  To  understand  such  expressions 
as  these  and  to  sympathize  with  them  it  is  quite  necessary 
to  think  of  the  world  as  these  old  Hebrews  thought  of  it. 
For  them  such  words  involved  no  conflict  with  their  ideas 
of  nature  and  of  the  world.  They  must  not  be  tested  by 
modern  scientific  discoveries,  but  must  be  taken  in  the 
spirit  in  which  they  were  meant. 

The  prophets  were  not  only  Hebrews,  sharing  these  views 
of  life  and  of  the  world;  they  were  also  poets.     To  the 


JUDGMENT— ACCOEDIXG   TO    AMOS        81 

natural  imagery  of  the  Oriental  mind  they  added  the  free- 
dom and  originality  of  thought  which  led  them  to  use 
familiar  facts  and  theories  as  poets  in  all  ages  have  done. 
In  their  prophetic  discourses  they  go  further  than  the 
average  man  in  representing  nature  as  influenced  by  the 
acts  of  God  and  man.  When  they  say  that  "the  top  of 
Carmel  shall  wither/'  that  "the  sun  will  go  down  at  noon/' 
that  "the  land  shall  melt/'  and  many  other  such  things, 
they  cannot  be  regarded  as  making  scientific  statements. 
They  are  speaking  as  Hebrews  and  as  poets,  and  their 
references  to  nature  have  the  same  exalted  fervor  as  their 
impassioned  words  on  other  subjects — for  example,  Amos 
2,  10;  3.  9,  10,  12;  5.  1,  2,  6;  6.  12,  13.  They  are  neither 
geologists  nor  astronomers  but  religious  teachers,  who 
utter  their  messages  in  terms  that  their  hearers  would 
recognize  at  once  as  appropriate  to  the  profoundly  serious 
character  of  the  message  itself. 

The  Word  of  the  Lord 

Among  the  punishments  that  Amos  announces  is  "a 
famine  of  the  words  of  the  Lord/^  when  men  shall  "run 
to  and  fro  to  seek  the  word  of  the  Lord  and  shall  not  find 
it"  (8.  11,  12).  Amos  is  right  in  indicating  this  as  a 
serious  fate.  We  are  so  accustomed  to  the  idea  that  the 
Bible  is  the  Word  of  God,  and  that  in  it  we  can  find  the 
word  of  the  Lord  whenever  we  desire  it,  that  at  first  we 
do  not  realize  that  Amos  was  not  speaking  of  any  col- 
lection of  the  words  of  God  which  had  been  uttered  to 
other  people  on  other  occasions  in  an  earlier  time;  he 
meant  what  the  Hebrews  called  "the  living  word" — a 
spoken  word  from  some  teacher  or  prophet,  through  whom 
God  sent  the  needed  word  at  a  needy  time.  He  saw  no 
comfort  in  the  idea  that  the  people  might  have  consulted 
the  words  that  God  had  anciently  uttered  through  Moses 
or  Samuel  or  David  or  Elijah.  He  realized  their  imme- 
diate and  constant  need  of  living  leaders  who  could  direct 
the  people  according  to  the  divine  will. 

The  idea  that  the  words  of  the  Lord,  or  the  Word  of 
God,  could  all  be  contained  in  a  single  writing  or  a  col- 
lection of  writings  such  as  our  Bible  would  have  caused 


82    AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

the  prophets  great  surprise.  Nobody  would  have  dreamed 
of  such  a  thing  at  that  time.  *^'The  word  of  God"  was 
their  term  for  God's  will  in  action.  It  was  this  word  that 
inspired  the  prophets,  it  was  this  that  created  the  world 
(Gen.  1),  it  was  this  that  accomplished  the  divine  pur- 
poses among  men  (Isa.  55.  11),  that  melted  the  hard 
heart  and  broke  the  stubborn  will  (Jer.  23.  29),  that 
sought  out  men's  inner  motives  (Heb.  4.  12),  that  brought 
to  spiritual  birth  the  first  Christian  fellowship  (1  Pet.  1. 
23).  It  is  unfortunate  that  this  large,  rich,  true,  and 
Scriptural  conception  of  God's  immediate  and  unfailing 
resources  of  leadership  should  ever  have  given  way  to  re- 
liance upon  a  collection  of  past  words  that,  precious  as 
they  are  beyond  all  measure,  cannot  be  and  were  never  in- 
tended to  be  a  substitute  for  '^the  living  word."  As  the 
divine  leadership  of  the  Hebrews  in  the  wilderness  could 
not  serve  for  the  guidance  of  David  in  his  kingdom;  as 
the  divine  direction  of  David  and  his  kingdom  could  not 
•serve  to  guide  the  returned  exiles  when  they  undertook 
to  reestablish  their  homes  and  their  worship ;  as  the  divine 
counsel  that  aided  the  returned  exiles  could  not  ade- 
quately direct  the  life  of  the  growing  Christian  church : 
so  it  is  now  and  ever  shall  be  that  the  supreme  need  of  all 
who  would  worthily  live  for  God  is  to  find  him  and  hear 
him  at  first  hand.  The  prophet  Jeremiah  voiced  this  in 
undying  words,  but  they  are  not  yet  understood  (Jer. 
31.  34). 

It  is  as  necessary  to-day  that  men  find  the  word  of  the 
Lord  as  in  the  days  of  Amos.  We  have  advantages  tliat  Amos 
and  his  people  did  not  have.  We  have  the  examples  and 
the  testimonies  of  "the  goodly  fellowship  of  the  prophets, 
the  glorious  company  of  the  apostles,  and  the  noble  army 
of  martyrs."  Above  all  we  have  the  life  and  teachings  of 
Jesus.  These  are  our  guides,  tried  and  trustworthy,  lead- 
ing us  toward  the  goal  discerned  so  long  ago  by  Amos  and 
Jeremiah,  where  God 

".  .  .  stooped  to  heal 
My  soul,  as  if  in  a  thunder  peal 
Where  one  heard  noise  and  one  saw  flame, 
I  only  knew  he  named  my  name." 


JUDGMENT— ACCORDING   TO    AMOS        83 

Questions  to  Discuss 

Is  a  Day  of  Judgment  to  be  feared  or  welcomed  ?  (Com- 
pare Psa.  96.  11-13.) 

Is  it  necessary  that  all  be  judged  on  the  same  "day*'  ? 

In  view  of  the  changes  through  which  the  idea  has 
passed,  can  we  be  sure  that  the  last  word  has  been  spoken 
on  the  subject? 

To  what  extent  is  the  future  of  our  earth  revealed  in  the 
poetic  language  of  the  prophets? 

Does  spiritual  and  ethical  righteousness  depend  on  the 
destruction  of  the  earth? 

If  such  an  event  should  occur,  would  the  survivors  be 
any  more  righteous  afterward  than  before? 

Is  righteousness  a  condition  of  body  or  of  spirit? 

Does  the  *'word  of  God"  or  the  ^'word  of  the  Lord"  in  the 
Bible  refer  chiefly  to  spoken  or  written  words  ? 

Where  is  the  word  of  God  to  be  looked  for? 

Is  any  light  thrown  on  this  subject  by  the  fact  that 
those  through  whom  the  word  of  God  came,  always  pre- 
sented it  as  something  new  in  their  own  day,  and  made  so 
little  reference  to  any  words  spoken  previously? 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  BLESSED  FUTURE 
Amos  9.  11-15 

The  Happy  Ending 

After  the  storm  a  calm !  The  stormy  little  book  of 
Amos,  with  its  wars  and  famines,  its  pestilences  and  earth- 
quakes, comes  to  a  most  surprising  close  in  a  picture  of 
peace  and  quiet,  of  homes  and  happiness.  The  stormy 
spirit  comes  to  anchor  in  a  haven  of  rest. 

As  one  reads  the  books  of  the  prophets  one  cannot  escape 
the  feeling  that  they  were  more  or  less  pessimistic  in  their 
outlook.  So  much  of  what  they  said  consists  of  criticism 
and  condemnation  that  the  first  impression  is  one  of  dark- 
ness and  gloom.  Further  reading,  however,  shows  that 
after  a  certain  amount  of  warning  and  rebuke,  a  contrast 
is  introduced  by  a  passage  that  gives  a  brighter  message, — 
a  ray  of  light  is  permitted  to  relieve  the  darkness.  The 
present  lesson  is  a  passage  of  this  character. 

Before  taking  it  up  in  detail  let  us  ask  why  there  should 
be  any  happy  ending  at  all.  Why  should  not  the  nation 
go  down  to  a  gloomy  destruction  if  it  is  really  as  sinful 
as  the  prophets  say  ?  Does  it  not  fully  deserve  such  a  fate  ? 
If  there  were  nothing  to  be  considered  but  sin  and  punish- 
ment, one  should  have  to  answer  that  punishment  was  un- 
avoidable, no  matter  how  severe,  whether  it  would  destroy 
the  nation  or  not. 

Yet  the  problem  never  seems  to  work  out  Just  that  way. 
Sin  itself  cannot  be  dealt  with  as  an  abstract  proposition. 
It  cannot  be  separated  from  the  sinner  himself.  The  sin- 
ner is  a  human  being  whom  God  loves.  God  loved — loves — 
the  world,  and  he  is  more  concerned  for  humanity  than 
for  theology.^     And  while  earnest  souls  have  been  labor- 

1  Compare  "The  sabbath  was  made   foreman,  and  not  man  for  the  sabbath" 
(Mark  2. 27). 

84: 


THE  BLESSED  FUTURE  85 

iously  working  out  elaborate  theories  of  sin  and  punish- 
ment, the  human  sinner,  whom  they  had  quite  forgotten, 
has  come  to  himself  and  said,  "I  will  arise  and  go  to  my 
Father";  and,  like  the  mists  before  the  morning  sun,  the 
elaborate  schemes  have  evaporated  before  the  love  that 
casts  out  fear.  So,  somehow  or  other,  these  universal 
dooms  never  quite  happen. 

It  is  a  curious  and  interesting  fact  that  this  very  race 
of  Hebrews,  and  especially  its  prophets,  who  have  given  us 
the  most  gloomy  forebodings  of  terrible  futures,  are  also 
the  ones  who  seem  to  have  felt  most  deeply  and  to  have 
set  forth  most  glowingly  the  hopes  and  promises  that  most 
effectively  discount  the  terrors  the  prophets  predict.  The 
chorus  of  despair  grows  faint,  and  a  new  song  is  heard: 
"0  death,  where  is  thy  sting?  0  grave,  where  is  thy  vic- 
tory ?" 

This  no  denial  of  the  principle  that  "whatsoever  a  man 
soweth  that  shall  he  also  reap."  But  no  one  is  ever  lim- 
ited to  a  single  sowing,  and  earlier  crops  can  often  be 
crowded  out  by  later  plantings.  Where  life  is  concerned, 
no  one  can  tell  at  any  particular  time  what  possibilities  lie 
just  ahead. 

Some  instinct  of  this  kind  seems  to  have  been  rooted 
deep  in  the  prophetic  consciousness.  Despite  their  words 
of  warning  and  of  punishment  they  were  never  quite  con- 
vinced that  Jehovah's  work  for  righteousness  would  end 
in  dismal  failure.  Out  of  this  profound  assurance  arises 
the  oft-noted  fact  that  while  many  ancient  peoples  looked 
back  to  a  distant  past  as  the  time  when  they_  had  their 
golden  age,  the  Hebrews  looked  forward  to  a  time  in  the 
future  when 

"All  we  have  willed  or  hoped  or  dreamed  of  good  shall  exist." 

Their  golden  age  was  yet  to  come.  In  spite  of  failures 
and  in  spite  of  fears,  though  some,  or  even  many,  indi- 
viduals might  seem  to  go  the  way  of  destruction,  they  were 
sure 

".  .  .  that   somehow   good 
Will  J)6  the  fifljal  goal  of  ill." 


86        AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

In  the  long  last  there  would  be  a  hapjDy  ending.  And 
we  feel  that  they  were  right.     Their  faith  is  also  ours. 

"Unto  the  upright  there  ariseth 
Light  in  the  darkness." 

Who  Drew  This  Pictuee? 

Men's  ideas  about  the  blessed  future  have  differed  as 
widely  as  their  ideas  about  the  judgment.  They  agree  in 
the  fact  that  there  shall  be  such  a  time;  but  just  when  or 
where  it  shall  be,  or  just  what  form  it  will  take  when  it 
arrives  are  questions  to  which  very  different  answers  have 
been  given.  The  passage  before  us  shows  a  twofold  in- 
terest— agricultural  and  national. 

According  to  the  first  idea  the  blessed  future  will  be  a 
kind  of  husbandman's  paradise,  characterized  by  a  fertil- 
ity rich  beyond  compare.  Such  a  picture  is  quite  as  inter- 
esting for  what  it  reveals  about  the  one  who  drew  it  as  for 
what  it  actually  portrays.  Such  a  future  would  make  but 
little  appeal  to  a  merchant  or  a  soldier  or  a  mechanic  or  a 
statesman.  It  is  evidently  designed  for  a  particular  class 
of  persons. 

It  confirms  what  was  said  in  a  previous  lesson  about  the 
prophets  expecting  the  blessed  future  to  take  place  on 
earth.  Even  if  these  words  were  regarded  as  poetical  in 
their  fervor,  their  reference  is  nevertheless  to  the  earth 
on  which  we  now  live.  The  words  are  not  figurative  nor 
symbolical  so  far  as  this  point  is  concerned.  They  are, 
indeed,  highly  colored,  but  they  are  direct  and  straight- 
forward and  speak  quite  frankly  of  a  kind  of  paradise  that 
would  be  heaven  to  a  man  whose  life  and  whose  delight 
were  to  plow,  to  plant,  and  to  reap. 

Such  a  future,  however,  could  hardly  have  satisfied 
Amos.  If  the  rest  of  the  book  truly  represents  his  feeling 
— and  there  is  no  reason  for  doubt  about  it — ,  this  kind  of 
future  was  far  removed  from  his  ideals.  True,  he  was  an 
out-of-doors  man  and  to  that  extent  would  feel  a  certain 
sympathy  with  the  picture.  But  it  lacks  elements  the  rest 
of  his  book  regards  as  essential.  Nothing  is  said  of  justice 
to  the  poor,  square  dealing  by  merchants^  nor  true  worship. 


THE   BLESSED   FUTUEE  87 

It  is  barely  possible  that,  after  all,  Amos  might  have 
felt  that  a  return  to  a  primitive,  agricultural  simplicity  of 
life  would  be  the  best  way  to  overcome  the  evils  he  so 
vigorously  denounced.  Instead  of  thinking  that  city  life, 
with  its  commerce,  its  luxury,  and  its  refinements  of 
civilization,  could  be  purified,  perhaps  he  regarded  it  as 
hopeless  and  felt  that  the  only  cure  for  its  evils  would  be 
to  abolish  it  altogether  and  let  everybody  get  back  to  the 
land.  In  view,  also,  of  the  high  ethical  spirit  represented 
in  the  rest  of  the  book,  it  is  difficult  to  suppose  that  Amos 
looked  forward  to  a  future  as  materialistic  and  as  self- 
centered  as  this — a  life  whose  chief  attraction  seems  to  be 
the  prospect  of  laborless  crops. 

According  to  the  second  idea  the  nation  is  to  be  restored 
from  captivity  and  is  to  be  reestablished  in  perpetual  se- 
curity. The  tabernacle  of  David,  which  has  been  over- 
thrown, is  to  be  restored.  This  tabernacle  (literally,  booth, 
or  hut)  seems  to  mean  the  Davidic  dynasty,  which,  as  we 
know,  ceased  with  the  Exile.  This  situation  would  in- 
volve a  mo3t  un-Amos-like  exaltation  of  the  nation. 

A  further  characteristic  of  the  rest  of  the  book  is  the 
way  Amos  ignores  the  idea  of  patriotism.  He  seems  to  be 
quite  unimpressed  by  it,  even  to  the  extent  of  regarding 
with  a  certain  complacency  his  nation's  downfall.  He 
shows  as  much  concern,  in  some  respects,  for  nations  that 
were  enemies  of  Israel  as  for  Israel  itself.  The  passage 
before  us  looks  toward  a  national  reestablishment  with  con- 
siderable enthusiasm.  Strange  to  say,  it  is  not  the  resto- 
ration of  the  nation  to  which  Amos  preached,  but  of  a 
nation  under  the  dynasty  of  David.  The  northern  king- 
dom, where  Amos  seems  to  have  done  all  his  preaching, 
had  revolted  from  the  sway  of  the  Davidic  line  two  cen- 
turies before  Amos  comes  on  the  scene ;  and  there  would 
be  nothing  attractive  to  the  people  of  the  northern  king- 
dom in  any  promise  involving  the  surrender  of  their  own 
independence  and  a  future  submission  to  some  descendant 
of  David. 

It  is  somewhat  surprising  to  note  in  this  passage — ^if, 
indeed,  it  be  from  Amos  at  all — the  absence  of  any  reason 
given  for  the  nation's  return.     Amos  does  not  condemn 


88        AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDEE 


the  people  without  giving  reasons  in  great  variety  for  his 
condemnations ;  and  it  is  hard  to  understand  how  he  could 
promise  a  blessed  future  without  indicating  some  repent- 
ance on  their  part  or  some  change  in  their  attitude  which 
would  justify  this  very  different  outlook. 

The  more  carefully  the  passage  is  considered,  the  more 
ground  there  seems  to  be  for  the  idea,  held  by  many  Bible 
students,  that  this  passage  has  been  added  to  the  book  by 
some  writer  who  lived  when  the  line  of  David  had  been 
definitely  cut  off,  when  the  people  were  in  captivity,  and 
when  the  hope  of  a  return  to  Palestine  was  springing  up 
in  the  hearts  of  faithful  exiles.  There  would  be  nothing 
strange  about  this.  We  know  that  just  as  the  book  of  the 
Psalms  grew  gradually  by  the  addition  of  new  Psalms  to 
earlier  small  collections;  and  just  as  the  Old  Testament 
itself  grew  from  time  to  time  as  successive  books  were 
written,  in  a  similar  way  many  of  the  books  of  the  prophets, 
while  bearing  the  names  of  those  Avhose  words  make  up 
the  greater  part  of  the  books,  were  expanded  by  later 
prophets  who  continued  and  applied  the  teachings  of  the 
first. 

So  when  the  question  is  asked,  "Who  drew  this  picture  V^ 
the  answer  would  be,  "Someone  far  more  deeply  concerned 
with  the  future  than  Amos  ever  shows  himself  to  have 
been.''  And  if  it  was  someone  other  than  Amos,  it  was 
probably  a  writer  who  lived  during  the  captivity  the  pas- 
sage refers  to. 

Other  Views — and  Ours 

The  present  lesson  should  be  compared  with  other  pas- 
sages bearing  on  this  subject.  Eead  Isa.  30.  26,  where 
it  "is  said  that  the  moon  sliall  be  as  bright  as  the  sun,  and 
the  sun  seven  times  as  bright  as  it  is  now.  Eead  Isa.  65. 
17-25,  where  the  "new  heavens  and  the  new  earth"  are 
simply  a  kind  of  edition  de  luxe  of  the  present  earth,  with 
Jerusalem,  Mount  Zion,  as  the  pkce  chiefly  concerned. 
In  this  new  earth  we  see  home-building,  vineyard-plant- 
ing, children  and  aged  people,  with  happiness  and  peace 
everywhere,  even  among  the  animals. 

While  not  all  the  pictures  of  the  blessed  future  are  as 


THE   BLESSED   FUTUEE  89 

materialistic  as  these,  if  several  of  them  are  read  one  right 
after  the  other,  one  cannot  fail  to  be  impressed  with  the 
preponderance  of  earthly  traits  in  all.  As  it  becomes 
clear,  however,  that  these  highly  colored  descriptions 
spring  from  the  poetic  freedom  of  prophetic  speech,  one 
recognizes  these  passages  as  expressing  the  hopes  and 
aspirations  of  those  who  were  sure  of  the  ultimate  security 
and  happiness  of  the  faithful.  They  are  not  charts  of  the 
future  nor  revelations  of  the  celestial  calendars;  they  are 
something  far  more  significant:  they  are  joyful  utterances 
of  a  trust  in  God  that  no  disaster  could  disappoint. 

Many  of  the  ideas  thus  set  forth  were  taken  over  into 
Christianity,  just  as  the  ideas  of  the  Judgment  were  taken; 
and  many  Christians  do  not  yet  distinguish  between  those 
elements  that  are  Jewish  and  those  that  are  Christian.  In 
view  of  the  numerous,  varied,  and  sometimes  conflicting 
descriptions  of  the  future  which  appear  in  the  Bible  it  is 
no  wonder  that  even  to-day  there  is  no  general  agreement 
as  to  the  character  of  the  future  life.  Many  are  trying  to 
discover  its  nature  through  supposed  communications  with 
those  on  the  other  side.  Yet  these  not  only  differ  widely 
from  each  other,  but  their  "revelations"  exhibit  the  same 
earthly  and  physical  traits  as  those  of  the  ancient  Hebrew 
seers. 

We,  as  Christians,  are  on  safest  and  surest  ground  when 
we  rest  back  on  the  indications  that  come  to  us  from  Jesus 
Christ.  While  he  u^ed  the  pictorial,  prophetic  method 
in  some  of  his  teachings  on  this  subject,  he  stands  apart 
from  all  others  in  the  way  he  regards  the  future  as  de- 
termined by  spiritual  and  ethical  principles,  even  where 
he  is  most  poetic  and  concrete.  He  lays  no  special  empha- 
sis upon  what  might  be  called  the  external  conditions  of 
the  future  life,  but  he  lays  unflinching  and  overpowering 
emphasis  on  those  qualities  of  heart  and  mind,  of  thought 
and  will,  which  make  a  man  what  he  really  is.  He  shows 
clearly  that  the  conditions  which  make  for  future  happiness 
are  spiritual  conditions,  and  that  these  are  operative  here 
and  now.  The  qualities  that  make  for  true  happiness 
there  make  for  true  happiness  here,  and  vice  versa. 

This  is  the  deeper  meaning  of  the  Beatitudes.     They 


90    AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

have  that  timeless  quality  which  appears  in  so  much — in- 
deed, in  practically  all — of  Jesus'  teachings.  In  these  fa- 
miliar and  matchless  words  Jesus  is  giving  utterance  to 
his  thought  of  life's  true  character,  there  as  well  as  here. 
For  Jesus  there  was  no  hard-and-fast  boundary  between 
present  and  future ;  he  lived  in  a  pure  present.  And  when 
he  spoke  of  those  qualities  of  spirit  which  "bless"  a  man 
he  was  speaking  and  thinking  of  qualities  that  belong  to 
eternity.  He  who  possesses  them  here  possesses  them  for- 
ever. They  can  neither  be  corrupted  nor  stolen;  they  are 
eternal  possessions.  And  just  because  they  endure  from 
present  to  future,  he  who  has  found  them  now  has  in  him- 
self the  strongest  assurance  that  the  blessed  future  will  be 

his. 

"Strive,  man,  to  win  that  glory; 
Toil,  man,  to  gain  that  light; 
Send  hope  before  to  grasp  it, 
Till  hope  be  lost  in  sight." 

Questions  to  Discuss 

To  what  extent  is  one's  idea  of  future  happiness  influ- 
enced by  his  idea  of  present  happiness? 

Would  the  prophets  be  subject  to  this  kind  of  influence? 
Would  they  be  any  the  less  spokesmen  for  God  if  they 
were? 

Turning  the  question  around,  is  it  not  true  that 
one's  idea  of  a  blessed  future  is  an  accurate  indication  of 
what  he  most  enjoys  and  most  desires? 

Would  a  farmer's  paradise  necessarily  be  a  merchant's 
paradise?  or  a  scholar's? 

Are  the  Jewish  beliefs  that  were  taken  over  into  Chris- 
tianity by  the  first  Christians  a  necessary  part  of  Chris- 
tianity ? 

Did  Jesus  and  Paul  accept  Judaism  as  a  whole?  Did 
they  cover  the  whole  subject  in  the  matter  of  acceptance 
or  rejection  ? 

Should  not  Christians  to-day  be  permitted  to  exercise 
discrimination  in  such  a  matter  ? 


CHAPTER  XII 

PROPHETS  AND  THE  CHURCH 

Amos  7.  10-17 

As  Others  Saw  Him 

This  passage  is  different  from  all  the  rest  of  the  book 
(except  1.  1)  in  being  a  story  about  Amos  rather  than  a 
report  of  his  words.  It  probably  serves,  by  this  very  dif- 
ference, to  indicate  the  true  character  of  the  book.  The 
words  in  verses  14-17  needed  some  kind  of  explanation  if 
they  were  to  be  understood,  and  so  the  description  in  verses 
10-13  is  supplied  by  whomever  made  this  collection  of 
Amos'  words.  The  whole  book  may  indeed  have  been 
brought  together  by  the  writer  of  this  brief  bit  of  descrip- 
tion. He  evidently  felt  the  dramatic  intensity  of  the  situa- 
tion he  here  describes.  We  should  have  been  grateful  if  he 
had  given  us  much  more  description  of  this  kind.  Many  of 
these  words  of  Amos  are  so  striking  just  as  they  stand 
that  they  would  be  even  more  vivid  if  we  knew  the  cir- 
cumstances under  which  they  were  spoken. 

This  is  the  only  place  in  the  book  which  gives  us  the 
slightest  hint  of  the  impression  Amos  made  upon  those 
who  heard  him.  No  one  can  read  his  glowing  words  with- 
out wondering  how  they  were  received.  Did  they  make 
the  people  angry?  Or  did  the  people  listen  in  a  patron- 
izing way  and  say,  "Poor  man,  he  means  well;  but  that 
sort  of  talk  will  never  get  him  anywhere"  ?  Probably  most 
of  the  people  were  on  the  side  of  Amaziah  and  the  king. 

The  absence  of  any  report  of  the  way  the  people  felt 
toward  Amos  makes  it  extremely  difficult  to  estimate  the 
importance  he  had  in  his  own  day.  The  fact  that  his  little 
book  is  now  in  the  Bible  gives  us  the  idea  that  he  was  a 
great  man,  and  he  was.  But  there  is  no  evidence  that 
he  was  regarded  as  a  great  man  from  the  first.    There  is 

91 


92        AMOS,  PEOPHET  OP  A  NEW  OEDER 

no  evidence  that  any  of  the  prophets  whom  we  know  as 
"great"  were  ever  received  with  approval  by  the  people  at 
large.  They  were  always  in  a  small  and  unpopular  mi- 
nority. 

It  should  not  be  overlooked,  however,  that  opposition  is 
no  proof  that  a  man  is  a  prophet.  A  man  may  be  highly 
unpopular  and  a  general  nuisance,  and  not  be  a  prophet 
on  that  account.  One  does  not  become  a  prophet  simply 
by  arousing  the  antagonism  of  his  neighbors.  The  martyr 
pose  is  not  always  evidence  of  the  martyr  spirit.  To  be  a 
prophet  he  must  make  a  positive  contribution  to  the  spirit- 
ual life  of  the  people,  must  lack  any  impulse  to  self-seeking, 
and  must  be  far  removed  from  petty  politics.  There  is  a 
largeness  of  word  and  purpose  about  all  the  true  prophets 
which  lifts  them  above  the  levels  of  life  and  thought  upon 
which  most  of  us  live,  move,  and  have  our  being. 

Amos  of  the  Free  Spirit 

As  Elijah  had  confronted  Ahab  in  Samaria  a  hundred 
years  before  this  time,  as  Paul  was  to  confront  Peter  at 
Antioch  eight  hundred  years  later,  so  Amos  the  prophet 
confronts  Amaziah  the  priest  at  Bethel.  Two  types  of 
religion,  represented  in  two  typical  personalities,  here 
stand  face  to  face. 

Amos  stands  for  God^s  immediate  access  to  the  human 
soul.  He  represents  no  institution,  whether  religious  or 
national.  He  regards  neither  king  nor  priest,  palace  nor 
temple.  He  barely  alludes  to  the  past,  and  then  only  to  a 
past  so  far  distant  that  it  serves  to  contradict  all  that  an 
Amaziah  would  regard  as  firmly  established.  He  cares 
nothing  for  orderly  methods  nor  for  courtly  ceremonies. 
He  stands  for  one  thing,  and  one  thing  only:  that  is  the 
living  voice  of  the  living  God  in  the  living  present.  He 
embodies  that  picture  of  the  prophet  sketched  later  in  such 
bold  strokes  by  Jeremiah : 

"He  that  hath  my  word, 
Let  him  speak  my  word  faithfully. 
Is  not  my  word  like  a  fire. 
And  like  a  hammer  that  shatters  the  rock?" 

(Jer.  23.  28,  29). 


PEOPHETS  AND  THE  CHURCH  93 

The  word  "prophet"  is  subject  to  some  misunderstand- 
ing in  this  passage.  We  have  formed  our  idea  of  prophets 
on  monumental  characters  such  as  Amos,  Isaiah,  and  Jere- 
miah without  realizing  that  these  men  were  quite  excep- 
tional. Aside  from  the  fact  that  they  sought  the  will  of 
God  without  reference  to  priest  or  sacrifice  they  had  little 
in  common  with  the  better-known  and  more  numerous 
"sons  of  the  prophets,"  who  represented  the  more  profes- 
sional side  of  prophecy.  These  latter  seem  to  have  been 
quite  as  conventional  and  quite  as  professional  in  their  own 
way  as  the  priests  were  in  theirs.  The  great  prophets  were 
of  a  different  order. 

Amos  uses  the  word  in  this  double  sense  in  verses  14,  15. 
He  first  denies  being  a  (professional)  prophet  or  a  member 
of  the  prophetic  guild  (sons  of  the  prophets)  and  then 
proceeds  immediately  to  say  that  the  Lord  had  told  him  to 
prophesy.  Amos'  own  idea  of  prophets  and  prophecy  ap- 
pears in  words  which  may  have  been  uttered  on  an  oc- 
casion similar  to  this  one: 

"Surely  the  Lord  Jehovah  will  do  nothing, 
But  he  revealeth  his  secret 
Unto  his  servants  the  prophets. 
The  lion  hath  roared:  who  will  not  fear? 
The  Lord  Jehovah  hath  spoken:  who  can  but  prophesy?" 

(Amos  3.  7,  8). 

One  cannot  help  feeling  that  these  words  are  a  quick  and 
stinging  rebuke  to  some  who  had  been  telling  Amos  that 
he  was  not  a  real  prophet,  and  that  he  did  not  have  "the 
word  of  the  Lord."  They  supply  another  indication  that 
prophets  of  the  Amos  type  were  neither  familiar  nor  popu- 
lar. It  is  as  much  of  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  all  the 
men  called  prophets  by  the  Hebrews  were  like  Amos  or 
Isaiah  as  to  suppose  that  all  preachers  in  our  own  day  are 
like  Henry  Ward  Beecher  or  Phillips  Brooks. 

Amaziah  the  Prudent  and  Prospeeous 

Amaziah  forms  a  contrast  to  Amos  in  almost  every 
respect.  He  stands  for  the  religion  handed  down  from 
the  fathers,  for  the  institutions  that  had  grown  out  of  and 


94        AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  XEW  ORDER 

around  that  religion,  for  precedent  and  propriety.  He 
also  stands  for  patriotism  and  is  a  champion  of  the  king 
as  well  as  of  the  temple.  He  thinks  it  outrageous  that 
Amos  should  threaten  the  nation  with  captivity  and  dis- 
aster. Such  language,  according  to  Amaziah,  is  treason- 
able and  seditious.  He  thinks  Amos  should  be  deported. 
Amos  belonged  in  the  south:  why  didn't  he  stay  there? 
Bethel  had  no  room  for  troublesome  intruders.  If  Amos 
didn't  like  the  way  things  were  going  in  Israel,  let  him  go 
back  where  he  came  from.  Furthermore,  Amos  is  not  only 
an  outsider  but  a  clumsy  farmer  as  well.  He  doesn't  know 
how  to  behave  himself  in  a  royal  sanctuary ! 

We  can  almost  hear  Amaziah's  ringing  tones,  vibrant 
with  righteous  indignation  in  a  holy  cause,  when  he  says 
to  Amos:  "0  thou  seer,  go,  flee  away  into  the  land  of 
Judah,  and  there  eat  bread,  and  prophesy  there;  but 
prophesy  not  again  any  more  at  Bethel,  for  it  is  the 
king's  shrine  and  a  royal  temple." 

It  is  quite  in  keeping  with  his  character,  as  indicated  in 
this  brief  dialogue,  that  he  should  have  this  "businesslike" 
view  of  priesthood  and  prophecy.  He  is  a  man  who  knows 
no  inner  imperative  apart  from  the  profitable  and  respect- 
able demands  of  his  profession.  He  is  not  necessarily  bad 
nor  narrow  nor  reactionary.  Indeed,  he  may  have  been  a 
very  good  man  up  to  his  lights.  He  simply  had  no  under- 
standing of  the  prophetic  spirit  which  spoke  in  Amos,  so 
he  took  it  for  granted  tliat  Amos,  like  himself,  regarded  his 
work  as  a  means  of  comfortable  support. 

Such  people — and  they  are  many — cannot  understand 
how  other  people  can  follow  a  calling  or  pursue  a  line  of 
action  that  brings  no  financial  return.  The  idea  is  simply 
unintelligible  that  some  souls  can  be  lit  with  an  inner 
flame,  led  by  a  wondrous  star,  and  live  obedient  to  a 
heavenly  vision,  taking  no  account  of  loaves  and  fishes — 
souls  that  cannot  live  by  bread  alone,  to  whom  hardship 
and  poverty  are  the  least  of  their  troubles,  who,  in  the 
words  of  the  apostle,  "approve  themselves  as  ministers  of 
God  in  much  patience,  in  afflictions,  in  necessities,  in  dis- 
tresses, ...  as  dying  and,  behold  they  live,  as  chas- 
tened and  not  killed,  as  sorrowful  yet  always  rejoicing,  as 


PROPHETS  AKD  THE  CHURCH  95 

paor  yet  making  many  rich,  as  having  notliing  and  yet 
possessing  all  things"  (2  Cor.  6.  4-10). 

Experiences  of  this  kind  lie  beyond  the  reach  not  only  of 
wicked  people  but  of  many  good  people  too.  They  were 
beyond  the  reach  of  Amaziah.  At  first  one  feels  a  little 
sorry  for  him,  that  with  his  high  position  and  its  corres- 
ponding opportunities  he  should  seem  so  mean  and  in- 
effective alongside  this  vigorous  and  unconventional  shep- 
herd-preacher. It  is  only  because  of  our  detachment  from 
the  whole  situation,  however,  that  we  can  regard  Amaziah 
in  this  light.  Centuries  of  history  have  reversed  the 
original  relations  of  Amaziah  and  Amos.  In  the  days  when 
both  were  living  Amaziah  was  the  lofty  one  and  Amos  the 
lowly.  Amaziah  had  every  advantage — an  assured  position, 
the  reverence  of  the  people,  the  favor  of  the  king.  He 
stood  on  the  side  of  respectability  and  orthodoxy.  He 
represented  the  elements  that  controlled  the  national  life, 
from  the  king  down. 

If  we  had  been  there  probably  we  should  have  supported 
Amaziah  rather  than  Amos.  This  assertion  is  made  on 
the  assumption  that  in  matters  of  this  kind  people  are 
much  the  same  in  all  ages.  They  would  far  rather  be  led 
than  be  forced  to  seek  out  new  paths  for  themselves.  When 
it  comes  to  religion,  independence  seems  as  dangerous  as 
it  is  difficult.  And  who  should  be  more  acceptable  as  lead- 
ers than  those  who  are  already  prominent,  who  already 
enjoy  the  general  confidence,  who  have  the  support  of  the 
ruling  classes,  and  who  represent  the  old-time  religion? 
Amaziah  is  not  to  be  lightly  pitied  nor  dismissed.  He  per- 
sonifies the  "general  opinion"  of  his  day  and  of  aU  days. 

^^EiTHEE — Oe"'  Veesus  "Both — And'" 

When  two  such  highly  characteristic  and  divergent  ideals 
as  those  embodied  in  Amos  and  Amaziah  confront  each 
other,  our  first  impression  is  that  one  of  them  is  wholly 
good  and  the  other  wholly  bad.  We  feel  that  we  must 
approve  one  and  condemn  the  other.  This  feeling  is  in- 
tensified in  this  particular  instance  because  of  the  place  the 
book  of  Amos  holds  in  the  Bible.  The  mere  fact  of  its 
presence  there  is  enough  to  assure  us  that  Amos  must  have 


96   AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  ORDER 

been  right,  and  that  all  who  opposed  him  or  whom  he 
condemned  must  have  been  wrong. 

The  contents  of  the  book  further  confirm  this  idea. 
Not  only  is  Amos  presented  as  warning,  rebuking,  and  de- 
nouncing the  whole  community,  but  the  book  leaves  the  im- 
pression that  the  people  well  deserve  all  that  Amos  says  to 
them  or  about  them.  This  little  story  about  Amaziah  is 
the  only  place  in  the  book  where  anyone  "answers  back,^' 
and  even  here  it  is  Amos  who  dominates  the  situation; 
so  that,  at  first,  there  seems  to  be  no  question  but  that 
either  Amos  is  all  right,  and  Amaziah  is  all  wrong,  or 
Amaziah  is  all  right,  and  Amos  is  all  wrong. 

It  may  be  granted  at  once  that  to  Amos  and  Amaziah 
themselves  such  a  choice  was  necessary.  Each  one  felt 
himself  to  be  in  the  right  and  the  other  in  the  wrong.  But 
we  stand  far  enough  away  from  them  to  see  that  life  as  a 
whole  is  larger  than  their  views  of  it,  and  that  we  need 
both  types  of  leaders.  In  order  that  the  principles  pro- 
claimed by  Amos  should  become  the  practical  basis  of 
daily  life,  it  would  be  quite  as  natural  as  it  was  necessary 
that  they  should  produce  some  kind  of  an  organization  de- 
voted to  their  application.  Men  have  to  work  in  groups 
this  way.  As  soon  as  that  is  recognized,  it  is  clear  that 
there  must  be  such  men  as  Amaziah  who  will  represent  the 
organization  and  its  purposes.  There  must  be,  so  to  speak, 
a  chairman  of  the  meeting. 

In  other  words,  Amos  and  Amaziah  stand  for  two  as- 
pects of  life  which  are  equally  essential  yet  which  seem  at 
times  to  be  in  violent  contradiction  with  each  other — 
namely,  inspiration  and  organization,  one  speaking 
through  the  individual,  and  the  other  through  the  group, 
one  supplying  principle  and  motive,  and  the  other  supply- 
ing form  and  method.  In  the  larger  field  of  human  life 
as  a  whole  we  cannot  say  either  Amos  or  Amaziah;  we 
must  include  both  Amos  aiid  Amaziah.  There  must  be 
such  men  as  Amos — men  who  are  inspired  and  who  inspire. 
These  men  must  awaken  our  consciences  by  giving  us  new 
standards  of  life  and  action.  They  must  humiliate  us  by 
pointing  out  how  far  short  we  come  of  the  glory  of  God. 
They  must  blaze  the  trail  for  further  progress  along  the 


PROPHETS  AND  THE  CHURCH  97 

ascending  and  unending  path  of  righteousness,  the  upward 
calling  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus. 

There  must  also  be  such  men  as  Amaziah — men  who 
can  teach  and  administer.  These  men  must  show  us  how 
to  organize  for  practical  use  the  spiritual  gains  brought 
us  by  the  others.  These  men  must  preserve  spiritual  val- 
ues through  the  long  centuries  that  lack  outstanding 
prophets.  They  must  teach  succeeding  generations  the 
way  of  life  as  far  as  that  way  has  been  made  known. 

These  facts  have  an  important  bearing  on  our  thought 
of  the  church.  The  church  is  obviously  a  great  organiza- 
tion, preserving  the  religious  inheritance  of  the  past,  teach- 
ing successive  generations,  consoling,  correcting,  leading 
men  from  age  to  age.  Yet  to  do  its  highest  work  it  must 
be  saved  from  the  drying-up  process  that  seems  to  be  the 
fate  of  all  organizations.  It  must  be  prevented  from  turn- 
ing its  attention  inward  upon  its  own  affairs  as  if  it  were 
an  end  in  itself.  It  must  not  only  keep  old  ideals  fresh 
and  vital,  but  must  be  expectant  and  receptive  of  new  ones. 
This  spirit  of  life,  this  eager  vitality,  is  awakened  and  re- 
vived by  seers  and  prophets.  They  are  the  ones  to  shake 
us  out  of  indolence,  to  open  blind  eyes  and  to  unstop  deaf 
ears.  Until  they  appear,  we  do  not  realize  how  mechani- 
cal and  formal  we  have  become,  nor  how  much  farther  we 
have  to  go. 

The  prophet  is  necessary  if  there  is  to  be  any  religious 
progress,  while  the  church  is  necessary  if  the  prophetic 
ideals  are  to  be  preserved,  administered,  and  made  prac- 
tical for  the  rank  and  file.  Prophets  themselves  make 
poor  church  members,  while  churches  seem  too  slow  and 
ponderous  to  satisfy  the  prophets.  Yet  the  church  gives 
the  prophet  his  background  and  his  inspiration,  while  the 
prophet  gives  the  church  its  visions  and  its  vitality.  Not 
either — or  but  both — and  should  represent  our  attitude 
toward  Amos  and  Amaziah,  toward  prophet  and  church. 
Without  the  prophetic  spirit  the  church  is  lifeless,  and 
without  the  churchly  means  and  methods  the  prophet  is 
helpless.  The  ideal  is  that  the  organization  should  be  di- 
rected and  administered  in  a  way  to  make  practical  and 
effective  the  high  aims  and  far  visions  of  the  prophets. 


98   AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDER 

Questions  to  Discuss 

Is  there  anything  in  the  book  of  Amos  that  prevents  us 
from  regarding  it  as  having  been  written  by  someone  who 
collected  his  sayings  rather  than  by  Amos  himself? 

Is  there  any  good  reason  why  a  few  words  of  other  teach- 
ers than  Amos  should  not  have  been  included  ? 

To  what  degree  has  a  man  a  right  to  criticize  and  to  de- 
nounce institutions  that  represent  a  nation's  religious  and 
political  life? 

Is  the  fact  that  a  man's  words  tend  to  disturb  the  peace 
a  sign  that  he  speaks  for  God  ?    Is  it  a  sign  that  he  doesn't  ? 

Is  there  any  way  by  which,  if  such  a  man  should  speak 
to-day,  we  could  be  sure  that  he  was  or  was  not  speaking 
for  God? 

Could  we  have  been  sure  about  Amos  if  we  had  lived 
then? 

Can  service  be  unselfish  if  it  be  paid  for  in  money? 
Where  can  we  draw  the  line?  How  about  ministers?  or 
Sunday-school  teachers? 


CHAPTER  XIII 
NOTES  THAT  INTERPRET  AMOS 

The  Note  of  Reality 

One  of  the  reasons  why  many  earnest  Christians  do  not 
get  more  out  of  their  reading  and  study  of  the  Bible  is 
because  it  seems  so  unreal  and  far  away.  Its  formal  lan- 
guage, its  unfamiliar  names,  its  strange  customs,  its  for- 
eign and  ancient  background,  and,  above  all,  its  hallowed 
associations  all  tend  to  remove  it  from  any  contact  with 
life  as  we  know  it  and  live  it.  The  people  referred  to  in 
the  Bible  are  regarded  as  being  "in  the  Bible^*  rather  than 
in  the  earth.  They  are  "Bible  characters"  rather  than 
*'human  characters."  The  Hebrew  nation,  so  far  as  its 
story  appears  in  the  Bible,  is  thought  of  as  having  lived, 
moved,  and  had  its  being  in  an  atmosphere  of  "religion," 
occupying  a  world  all  its  own — a  world  that  had  little  or 
nothing  in  common  with  the  ancient  world  we  study  about 
in  school. 

While  it  is  true  that  these  ideas  are  not  always  stated  in 
just  these  words,  years  of  observation  confirm  the  opinion 
that  for  most  readers  the  Bible  has  all  the  unreality  here 
indicated.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  readers  are  not 
religious  or  sincere.  Most  of  them  are  undoubtedly  earnest 
and  devout,  and  many  of  them  are  living  lives  that  are 
beautiful  examples  of  the  Christian  spirit.  Neither  does 
it  mean  that  this  feeling  of  distance  and  unreality  prevents 
a  man  from  "getting  good  out  of  the  Bible."  Innumerable 
passages  spring  immediately  to  mind  as  words  that,  beyond 
all  others  and  beyond  aU  question,  are  "profitable  for  teach- 
ing, for  reproof,  for  correction,  for  instruction  in  right- 
eousness." 

The  sayings  of  the  Bible,  enriched  by  centuries  of  sacred 
associations,  justify  all  that  has  been  affirmed  of  their 
power  and  beauty,  but  they  do  not  stand  alone.    Back  of 

99 


100      AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDER 

them  are  the  men  who  first  spoke  them  and  who  lived 
them  before  they  were  spoken.  David  lived  and  loved  before 
the  Psalms  were  written ;  Isaiah  prayed  and  taught  before 
there  could  be  a  book  of  Isaiah;  Peter  and  Paul  and  the 
rest  were  telling  the  gospel  story  and  living  Christian 
lives  before  there  was  any  New  Testament.  The  Spirit 
of  God  in  the  heart  of  man  produced  the  Scriptures.  That 
is,  God  came  into  the  Scriptures  by  way  of  man;  he  did 
not  come  to  man  by  way  of  the  Scriptures. 

This  means  that  the  task  of  the  Bible  student  is  not  to 
make  the  Scriptures  real  but  to  discover  the  reality  already 
there.  Amos,  Amaziah,  and  Jeroboam  were  real  people, 
leading  busy  lives  according  to  their  place  and  calling. 
The  lesson  they  have  for  us  cannot  be  found  from  their 
words  alone.  The  character  and  principles  that  lie  back 
of  the  words  must  show  us  what  the  words  mean;  for  the 
same  words  spoken  by  different  persons  may  have  quite 
different  meanings.  There  could  be  no  more  striking 
illustration  of  this  than  the  way  the  words  of  Jesus  are 
felt  to  derive  their  chief  value  from  his  character  and 
spirit.  It  was  because  he  lived  his  gospel  that  the  gospel 
words  speak  with  divine  power.  When  this  reality  has  once 
been  discerned,  the  Bible  becomes  a  new  book.  Its  pages 
glow  with  a  new  light  and  its  words  speak  with  a  new 
spirit.  Its  figures  come  to  life  and  call  to  us  across  the 
centuries : 

"Seek  ye  the  Lord  while  he  may  be  found; 
Call  ye  upon  him  while  he  is  near"  (Isa.  55.  6). 

For  out  of  lives  as  earnest  and  as  perplexing  as  our  own 
they  sought  the  Lord.  Out  of  tribulation  and  distress,  out 
of  doubts  and  fears,  they  called  upon  him.  Their  search 
is  ours.  And  despite  the  immeasurable  advantage  and 
illumination  that  have  come  to  us  since  their  day  the  end 
is  not  yet. 

The  Note  of  Progress 

As  soon  as  the  note  of  reality  has  been  struck,  its  sound 
carries  far  beyond  a  single  event  or  individual.  As  Amos 
is  recognized  in  terms  of  real  life  he  loses  his  isolation  and 
is  seen  as  one  of  many  men  who  in  their  own  way  wrought 


NOTES  THAT  INTERPEET  AMOS  101 

and  taught  the  will  of  God  so  far  as  it  had  been  revealed 
to  their  time. 

In  the  study  of  a  prophet  like  Amos  at  least  two  steps 
are  involved.  The  first  step  is  to  examine  his  book  and 
anything  else  about  him  that  can  be  found  in  order  to  dis- 
cover the  man  himself  and  just  what  he  stood  for.  No 
matter  how  severe  his  words  nor  how  extreme  some  of  his 
ideas,  the  task  is  not  to  criticize  but  to  construct.  He 
must  be  permitted  to  stand  on  his  own  feet,  to  see  things 
with  his  own  eyes,  and  to  speak  his  message  in  his  own 
words. 

This  kind  of  study  neither  denies  nor  obscures  the  work 
of  the  Spirit  of  God.  It  is  not  until  such  study  is  per- 
formed that  the  divine  process  can  be  recognized  and  ap- 
preciated. The  prophets  were  men  quite  out  of  the  or- 
dinary in  their  sensitiveness  to  the  divine  Spirit  and  in 
the  intensity  with  which  they  gave  themselves  to  the  procla- 
mation of  the  divine  will.  But  this  very  sensitiveness  and 
intensity  mark  them  out  as  men  whose  messages  must  be 
carefully  distinguished  from  their  personalities.  Only  as 
their  personal  traits  and  points  of  view  become  clear 
can  we  escape  the  danger  of  accepting  as  the  word  of  God 
some  word  of  the  prophet  which  springs  from  individual- 
ity rather  than  from  inspiration. 

The  second  step  is  to  give  the  prophet  his  place  in  the 
great  stream  of  progressive  revelation  which  flows  through 
the  Bible.  Moses,  Samuel,  Nathan,  Elijah,  and  many 
other  prophets  had  arisen  before  the  time  of  Amos,  each 
one  in  his  own  day  speaking  the  word  of  the  Lord  as  the 
Lord  made  it  known.  After  Amos  were  to  come  Isaiah, 
Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  and  many  others,  differing  among 
themselves  as  "one  star  differeth  from  another  star  in 
glory.''  When  given  his  proper  place  among  these  other 
prophets  the  teachings  of  Amos  fall  into  a  true  perspective. 
It  can  then  be  seen  where  he  advanced  beyond  his  prede- 
cessors, where  he  fell  below  those  who  followed,  and  where 
his  words  had  purely  local  and  temporary  significance. 
Unless  this  second  step  is  taken,  it  is  easy  to  be  misled  as 
to  the  ultimate  value  or  importance  of  any  word  of  any 
prophet,  including  Amos, 


102      AMOS,  PEOPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDER 

The  revelation  that  comes  in  the  life  and  words  of  any- 
one of  the  Old  Testament  characters  is  not  a  complete  or 
final  revelation.  It  was  not  complete  for  any  one  type  of 
teacher,  because  priest  and  prophet,  sage  and  psalmist, 
differed  from  each  other  quite  as  widely  then  as  such  men 
would  differ  to-day,  representing  as  they  do  such  different 
aims  and  points  of  view.  Even  less  was  it  complete  for 
any  one  ame,  because  successive  priests,  prophets,  and 
sages  were  continually  striking  out  new  paths,  enlarging 
upon  the  work  of  their  predecessors,  at  times  correcting  it, 
and  even  on  occasion  superseding  it  entirely.  In  a  word, 
revelation  was  progressive,  "shining  more  and  more  unto 
the  perfect  day.'^ 

The  Note  of  Christ 

If  it  had  not  been  for  Jesus,  probably  few  outside  the 
Jewish  race  would  ever  have  heard  of  the  Jewish  Scrip- 
tures. The  collection  of  writings  which  we  call  the  Old 
Testament,  and  which  the  Jews  call  the  Scriptures,  was 
Drought  over  into  Christianity  by  the  first  followers  of 
Jesus;  and  until  the  new  faith  produced  writings  of  its 
own,  these  were  the  only  Scriptures  the  Christians  had. 
Even  after  numerous  Christian  writings  had  appeared,  it 
was  some  time  before  they  were  held  in  as  high  esteem  as 
the  writings  received  from  the  Jews.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
these  were  never  displaced.  And  when,  as  the  years  passed, 
the  Christian  writings  were  finally  accepted  as  the  equal 
of  the  Jewish  Scriptures  in  sanctity  and  authority,  the 
two  collections  were  joined  together,  the  former  being 
called  the  Old  Testament,  and  the  latter  the  New. 

Once  the  Christians  had  produced  a  literature  of  their 
own,  they  would  not  have  needed  the  Jewish  writings  any 
further,  unless  these  had  some  vital  relation  to  the  new 
faith.  It  was  realized  not  only  that  Christ  was  to  be 
found  in  the  Old  Testament,  but  that  the  Old  Testament 
was  preparatory  for  the  New ;  so  that  from  the  days  of  the 
first  followers  of  Jesus  the  Jewish  Scriptures  have  formed 
part  of  the  Christian  Bible. 

At  first  the  references  to  Christ  were  found  almost  ex- 
clusively in  symbols  and  types  or  in  prophetic  predictions 


NOTES  THAT  INTERPEET  AMOS    103 

that  were  regarded  as  anticipating  his  historic  appearance ; 
and  in  some  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  these  were  not 
difficult  to  find.  But  these  are  not  the  only  anticipations 
of  Christ  which  the  Old  Testament  affords,  and  more  re- 
cent study  has  recognized  that  the  whole  Old  Testament, 
in  all  its  narratives,  sermons,  psalms,  and  proverbs,  is  the 
record  of  an  agelong  approach  to  God  as  revealed  in  Jesus 
Christ.  Throughout  the  long  devious  history  of  Hebrew 
religious  thought  the  valleys  were  being  exalted,  the  moun- 
tains and  hills  made  low,  the  crooked  made  straight,  and 
the  rough  places  plain,  that  the  glory  of  the  Lord  might 
be  revealed. 

Under  the  guidance  and  inspiration  of  their  religious 
teachers  the  Hebrew  people  were  slowly  being  led  to  deeper 
ideas  of  sin  and  righteousness,  more  spiritual  ideas  of  God, 
more  ethical  ideas  of  man's  relation  to  his  fellows,  and 
purer  ideas  of  love  and  hope.  Without  this  kind  of  prepara- 
tion in  the  life  and  thought  of  the  people  special  predic- 
tions and  symbolic  interpretations  would  have  accom- 
plished little  in  the  way  of  real  preparation. 

True,  the  people  as  a  whole  did  not  keep  pace  with  their 
prophets ;  but  those  who  did,  few  though  they  were,  formed 
a  leaven  whose  influence  was  not  confined  to  their  own 
immediate  circle,  and  it  was  they  who  made  possible  the 
little  group  that  welcomed  Jesus  when  he  came.  It  may 
well  be  doubted  whether  any  of  the  apostles  would  have 
been  ready  to  receive  and  to  preserve  the  Golden  Rule  if 
Amos  and  those  who  followed  him  had  not  taught  justice 
to  the  poor  and  kindness  toward  the  weak.  As  a  matter 
of  fact  it  was  when  the  prophets  were  most  active  among 
their  own  people  that  they  were  doing  their  most  fruitful 
work  as  heralds  of  the  One  who  was  to  come.  They  ad- 
dressed themselves  to  whatever  situation  the  people  were  in 
at  the  time.  They  set  forth  new  standards  of  human  ac- 
tion, they  rebuked  the  people  for  not  meeting  these 
standards,  they  warned  them  of  the  punishments  that 
would  follow  disobedience.  In  this  way  they  were  break- 
ing up  fallow  ground  and  sowing  the  seed  of  a  purer  and 
truer  religion.  In  a  spiritual  sense  the  Christian  religion 
is  the  harvest  of  that  sowing. 


104      AMOS,  PROPHET  OF  A  NEW  OEDER 

Jesus  is  thus  both  the  fulfillment  and  the  interpretation 
of  these  preparations.  Until  he  came,  the  searching  words 
of  the  prophets,  their  appeals,  their  warnings,  their  hopes, 
were  scattered  here  and  there  along  the  path  of  Hebrew 
history.  They  had  little  inner  connection  and  they  gave 
no  indication  of  forming  parts  of  any  large  clear  design. 

The  messengers  reflect  the  isolation  of  the  messages. 
The  prophets  were  well  aware  of  the  inner  urging  of  the 
divine  Spirit.  Their  feet  were  set  on  the  heavenward 
road.  They  had  unfaltering  trust  in  God,  and  nothing 
could  shake  their  confidence  in  the  righteousness  of  his 
cause  and  its  ultimate  victory.  But  it  was  a  direction  they 
were  sure  of,  not  a  goal. 

Then,  in  the  fullness  of  time,  Jesus  came,  and  all  the 
scattered  lights  that  had  shone  here  and  there  through  the 
years  were  drawn  together  to  a  focus.  All  the  graces  and 
virtues,  the  hopes  and  high  aims,  that  had  inspired  and 
ennobled  the  Hebrew  race  previous  to  that  time  now  fell 
into  place,  as  men  caught  a  glimpse  of  "the  measure  of 
the  stature  of  the  fullness  of  Christ.''  Immediately  those 
prophetic  messages  took  on  new  meaning.  Tiiey  were  re- 
cognized as  partial  expressions  of  the  spirit  that  was  in 
Jesus,  and  as  such  it  was  realized  that  they  were  true  fore- 
gleams  of  the  true  Light. 

This  kind  of  a  fulfillment  of  the  prophecies  includes 
them  all.  It  does  not  seek  here  and  there  a  word  or  a 
figure  that  may  be  applied  to  Christ.  It  goes  at  once  to 
the  heart  of  the  matter:  man's  faith  and  man's  duty.  It 
concerns  the  very  spirit  of  the  great  work  to  which  Christ 
gave  himself — that  of  leading  men  to  love  God  with  all 
their  hearts  and  their  neighbors  as  themselves. 

The  more  clearly  this  purpose  of  Christ  is  understood, 
the  easier  it  is  to  see  the  true  nature  of  the  prophetic  work 
and  the  vital  importance  of  the  prophets  themselves.  It  is 
possible  to  recognize  an  underlying  harmony  of  purpose 
which  relates  the  prophets  closely  to  one  another  despite 
the  numerous  differences  and  occasional  contradictions. 
They  differed  greatly  among  themselves  in  personal  char- 
acteristics and  they  were  called  to  meet  very  different 
situations;  so  that  they  necessarily  differed  in  manner  and 


NOTES  THAT  INTERPRET  AMOS    105 

message,  "but  all  these  worketh  that  one  and  the  self -same 
Spirit,  dividing  to  each  one  severally  as  he  will/^ 

It  is  in  this  "goodly  fellowship  of  the  prophets"  that 
Amos  belongs.  The  fervor  of  his  utterance  and  the  fre- 
quent harshness  of  his  words  have  made  him  seem,  at 
times,  almost  forbidding.  Yet  these  cannot  obscure  his 
heartfelt  burden  for  his  people  and  the  spiritual  perplexi- 
ties that  this  occasioned  in  his  own  soul.  If  he  stood 
alone,  as  the  only  prophet,  we  might  have  a  most  unfavor- 
able impression  of  prophecy.  But  when  he  is  recognized 
as  one  who  had  to  break  new  ground  in  the  field  of  re- 
ligion and  as  only  one  of  the  earliest  in  a  long  line  of 
inspired  teachers,  his  uncompromising  rigor  can  be  under- 
stood and  forgiven,  and  his  enduring  contribution  to  reli- 
gious thought  properly  appreciated. 

And  even  though  he  has  no  word  which  taken  by  itself 
points  directly  and  individually  to  Jesus,  there  moves 
through  all  his  message  that  new  sense  of  justice,  of  the 
value  of  man  as  man,  and  of  the  deceitfulness  of  riches, 
which  links  him  immediately  with  the  Great  Teacher. 
Christ  thus  interprets  and  fulfills  the  message  of  Amos; 
and  in  the  light  of  this  interpretation  and  fulfillment 
Amos  stands  forth,  clearly  outlined  against  the  dim  back- 
ground of  a  distant  past,  as  one  whose  glory  it  was,  accord- 
ing to  his  light  and  his  opportunity,  truly  to  prepare  the 
way  for  the  Christ,  the  Saviour  of  the  world.  And  man 
can  have  no  higher  glory. 

Review 

Gather  up  what  has  been  learned  on  the  following  sub- 
jects and  any  others  that  may  suggest  themselves: 
What   constitutes   true   worship? 
How  can  men  best  serve  God? 
The  dangers  of  wealth  and  luxury. 
The  rights  of  the  poor. 
The  importance  of  civil  and  social  justice. 
The  power  and  limitations  of  prayer. 
The  relation  of  the  prophets  to  the  coming  of  Christ. 


Date  Due 


Wi 


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a  new  older, 

Amos,  pruw— ■              ^;,arv-Speer  Library 
PnncelonTheolog>cjS«         „ 


7  1012  00012  5734 


